;-NRLF 


LINCOLN 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 

(From  photograph  of  an  ambrotype  taken  at  Monniouth.  Illinois, 
four  days  after  the  Lincoln -Douglas  debate  in  that  city.  Said  to  be 
one  of  the  most  perfect  likenesses  of  Lincoln  in  existence.) 


LINCOLN 


BY 

ISAAC   NEWTON   PHILLIPS 
i\ 

REPORTER   OF   DECISIONS    OF 
THE    ILLINOIS   SUPREME   COURT 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 

1910 


COPYRIGHT,  1901,  BY  ISAAC  N.  PHILLIPI 

COPYRIGHT,  1910 
A.  C.  McCLURG  &  Co. 
PCBLISHEO  FEB.  12,  1910 


"Let  us  have  faith  that  right  makes 
might,  and  in  that  faith  let  us,  to  the  end, 
dare  to  do  our  duty  as  we  understand  it." 
— Lincoln's  Speech  at  Cooper  Institute,  New  York. 


283081 


EXPLANATORY 

IT  is  proper,  I  think,  to  say  to  the  reader 
that  what  is  here  printed  is,  with  slight 
corrections  and  enlargements,  identical  with 
an  address  which  I  prepared  ten  years  or 
more  ago.  The  address  was  delivered  before 
several  Illinois  audiences— among  others,  be- 
iore  the  faculty  and  students  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  Illinois  at  Urbana.  The  language 
used  is,  therefore,  less  impersonal  than  would 
be  proper  in  a  monograph  written  for  publi 
cation.  I  have,  however,  thought  best  not  to 
change  the  form  of  its  presentation,  but  let 
it  go  into  print  substantially  as  delivered. 

I    "NT    P 
BLOOMINGTON,  ILL., 

January  15,  1910. 


LINCOLN 

WHEN  Abraham  Lincoln, 
after  having  been 
named    for    President, 
was    questioned    by    a 
campaign  biographer  as  to  his  early 
life,  he  very  pathetically  said  the 
whole   story  might  be   told  in  a 
single  line  of  Gray's  " Elegy," — 
"  The  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor." 

All  the  world  has  now  learned  that 
the  man  who  spoke  thus  modestly 
of  himself  was  born  in  the  State  of 
Kentucky  on  the  twelfth  day  of 
February,  1809.  His  cradle,  if  he 
ever  had  one,  stood  upon  the  dirt 
floor  of  a  rude  log  hut;  above  it  was 
a  clap-board  roof;  about  it  was  that 
kind  of  superstition  which  an  iso- 


LINCOLN 

lated  people,  full  of  rude  elemental 
force,  is  apt  to  manifest,  and  that 
kind  of  poverty  which,  in  a  new 
and  free  country,  casts  no  shadow 
of  degradation,  for  it  is  not  the  ab 
sence  of  goods  but  the  invidious 
and  blighting  contrast  of  conditions 
which  constitutes  real  poverty.  This 
boy,  too,  was  surrounded  by  people 
who  were  profoundly  ignorant  of 
the  world  and  of  the  ways  of  men, 
and  almost  as  profoundly  ignorant 
of  all  bookish  learning.  It  is  cer 
tain  that  the  humblest  child  in  the 
whole  country  might  now,  within 
the  limits  of  a  single  year,  have  the 
benefit  of  a  far  better  schooling 
than  was  accessible  to  Lincoln  in 
the  time  covering  all  the  years  of 
his  minority.  His  surroundings 

[2] 


LINCOLN 

from  birth  to  manhood  remained 
practically  unchanged,  and,  al 
though  his  roving  father  made  in 
that  time  something  more  than  the 
number  of  removes  which  Poor 
Richard  deemed  "  equal  to  one 
fire,"  there  is  no  evidence  that  in 
the  first  twenty  -one  years  of  his 
life  Abraham  Lincoln  met  with  any 
personal  example,  or  fell  under 
any  social  influence,  which  would 
ordinarily  be  expected  to  quicken 
his  mind,  arouse  his  hope,  or  in 
spire  his  ambition. 


rise  of  one  of  the  greatest 
statesmen  of  history  from  an 
environment  apparently  so  luck 
less,  naturally  awakens  intense  in 
terest  and  even  enthusiasm.  But 

[3] 


LINCOLN 

the  phenomenon  is  less  wonderful 
than  it  seems.  Had  Lincoln  arisen 
from  out  the  slums  of  a  great  city, 
or  even  from  the  social  opulence 
and  pampered  ease  of  a  palace  at 
Newport,  to  the  intellectual  and 
moral  plane  where  the  assassin's 
bullet  found  him,  the  case  would 
be  more  truly  wonderful  than  it 
is.  Though  of  obscure  parentage, 
Abraham  Lincoln  was,  in  breeding, 
no  mongrel.  In  spite  of  the  indus 
trious  muck-rakes  of  shameless  so- 
called  biographers,  it  is  now  known 
that,  both  through  his  father  and 
his  mother,  this  boy  received  rich 
strains  of  honest  English  blood — 
blood  which  had  been  strengthened 
and  sweetened  on  its  course 
through  the  veins  of  generations  of 

[4] 


LINCOLN 

sturdy  American  pioneers.  He 
lived  with  Nature  and  learned  of 
her.  He  toiled,  but  his  toil  was 
never  hopeless  and  degrading.  His 
feet  were  upon  the  earth,  but  the 
stars,  shining  in  perennial  beauty, 
were  ever  above  him  to  inspire  con 
templation.  He  heard  the  song  of 
the  thrush  and  the  carol  of  the  lark. 
He  watched  the  sun  in  its  course. 
He  knew  the  dim  paths  of  the 
forest,  and  his  soul  was  awed  by 
the  power  of  the  storm.  Out  from 
the  heart  of  Nature's  solitudes  he 
brought  all  the  elements  of  high 
success:  namely,  a  good  heart,  a 
clear  head,  and  a  strong  body;  and 
these  factors,  under  the  stimulating 
influence  of  free  institutions,  at 
length  wrought  in  the  rude  back- 

[5] 


LINCOLN 

woodsman  a  wonderful  personal 
transfiguration,  the  successive 
stages  of  which  my  plan  does  not 
permit  me  to  trace. 

At  the  day  of  his  death  Lincoln's 
reputation  had  already  filled  the 
world,  and  the  intense  popular  af 
fection  for  his  memory,  which  still 
constantly  grows,  although  its  sub 
ject  has  been  for  nearly  half  a  cen 
tury  in  his  tomb,  may  be  regarded 
as  the  sure  sign  of  one  of  those 
transcendent  fames  such  as  popular 
favor  confers  scarcely  once  in  a 
century. 

A  S  a  politician  Abraham  Lincoln 

was  in  breadth  and  sincerity 

the   superior,   and  in  shrewdness 

and    success    the    full    equal,    of 

[6] 


LINCOLN 

Thomas  Jefferson;  yet  he  was  much 
more  than  a  politician.  No  man  of 
his  age  wrote  more  effective  Eng 
lish  than  he;  yet  it  is  not  as  a 
rhetorician  that  Americans  revere 
him.  His  keenness  of  humor  and 
aptness  of  anecdote  were  never  sur 
passed  by  any  public  man;  yet 
history  sternly  refuses  to  regard 
Abraham  Lincoln  as  a  jester.  He 
was  a  patriot,  high  and  true;  but 
patriotism  does  not  distinguish 
him,  for  in  his  da}^  many  others 
were  also  patriots,  giving  even  life 
to  the  cause.  He  was  a  statesman 
of  prodigious  breadth  and  grasp 
— fearless,  imperturbable,  self-re 
liant — and  when  he  judged  prin 
ciple  to  be  at  stake,  absolutely 
immovable ;  yet  even  the  high  term 

[7] 


NCOLN 


"statesman"  does  not  express 
quite  the  full  measure  of  Lincoln, 
or  of  Lincoln's  fame.  To  all  these 
elements  he  united  a  personality 
the  most  striking,  the  most  singu 
lar,  and  the  most  original  which  is 
met  with  in  history,  and  beneath 
it  all  lay  the  unfathomable  mystery 
of  a  human  soul.  In  the  depths  of 
that  rugged  and  pathetic  face  were 
the  signs  of  a  spirit  that  in  its 
highest  moments  communed  with 
itself  and  walked  alone,  — 
"His  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart." 

T)UBLIC  life  has  its  illusions  and 
fame  has  its  counterfeits.  The 
relative  importance  of  contempo 
rary  historic  characters,  like  the 
relative  height  and  size  of  adjacent 

[8] 


LINCOLN 

mountains,  is  not  fully  known  until 
the  whole  group  is  seen  from  a  dis 
tance.  The  vain  and  noisy  little 
man  of  each  period  "  struts  and 
frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage"  with 
such  a  deal  of  pomposity  and  show, 
that  he  appears  to  his  undiscrimi- 
nating  contemporaries  quite  as  im 
portant  as  the  real  makers  of 
history.  Like  the  " mother  frog" 
in  the  fable,  he  tries  with  breath 
alone  to  puff  himself  up  to  a  colos 
sal  stature,  and  not  unfrequently, 
like  the  frog,  collapses  in  the 
process. 

True  greatness  is  the  consecra 
tion  of  either  great  talents  or  great 
character  to  the  service  of  man 
kind.  When  we  read  the  story  of 
a  truly  great  life  we  learn  of 

[9] 


LINCOLN 

high  purposes  pursued  by  effective 
methods;  we  learn  of  a  lofty  devo 
tion  to  truth,  of  supreme  faith  in 
the  right,  of  heroic  self-sacrifice;  in 
short,  we  learn  of  a  supreme  strug 
gle  of  genius  in  the  service  of  man 
kind.  Then,  too,  a  great  cause  is 
necessary  to  a  great  public  career. 
Mere  feats  of  intellectual  agility 
send  no  man's  name  to  the  Pan 
theon.  There  may,  for  aught  I 
know,  be  "mute,  inglorious  Mil- 
tons"  in  this  world,  but  so  long  as 
they  are  mute  they  are  inefficient. 
During  several  years  Lincoln  filled 
the  public  eye.  He  had  a  cause, 
and  directly  in  proportion  to  the 
greatness  of  that  cause  was  his  ca 
reer  great.  That  cause  measures 
Lincoln's  public  career,  but  it  does 

[10] 


LINCOLN 

not  completely  measure  Lincoln. 
After  the  voluminous  biographies 
have  all  been  read;  after  the  gar 
rulous  "old  settler,"  who  never  so 
much  as  suspected  the  greatness  of 
the  man  in  his  lifetime,  has  related 
his  apochryphal  ' '  recollections, ' ' 
and  told  his  mythical  anecdotes  — 
always  exaggerating  his  own  famil 
iar  relations  with  Lincoln — we  feel 
that  there  is  a  Lincoln  still  unre- 
vealed  who  is  now  beginning  to 
fade  away.  It  is  this  Lincoln  whom 
I  shall  endeavor  to  make  known  in 
this  brief  study.  I  shall  speak  of 
Lincoln  in  his  great  character  as 
a  statesman,  and  not  as  a  gawk,  a 
buffoon,  or  a  yarn -spinner. 


en] 


LINCOLN 

T  T  is  necessary,  however,  that  in 
an  appreciative  study  of  Lin 
coln  we  take  a  comprehensive  view 
of  his  work.  We  must  note  that 
which  had  preceded  him  as  well  as 
that  which  immediately  surrounded 
him.  I  must  ask  you  to  bear  with 
me,  therefore,  while  I  go  back  a 
little  to  find  the  historic  back 
ground  of  our  picture. 

There  was  in  the  last  century  a 
" critical  period"  of  American  his 
tory,  which  Mr.  Fiske  places  be 
tween  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis 
and  the  adoption  of  the  Federal 
Constitution.  This  period  was 
"critical"  for  the  reason  that  in 
that  time  it  was  painfully  uncertain 
whether  a  permanent  union  could 
ever  be  formed  of  the  American 

[12] 


LINCOLN 

States.  The  upheaval  of  the  Revo 
lution  had  unsettled  the  conserva 
tive  force  of  the  American  mind, 
and  more  follies  than  would  have 
re-filled  Pandora's  box  a  hundred 
times  had  broken  out  in  all  the 
American  colonies — follies  which 
in  their  consequences  threatened  to 
become  even  worse  than  u taxation 
without  representation." 

Revolutions  are  not  often  well- 
adapted  to  the  training  of  states 
men.  A  very  good  revolutionary 
patriot  may  be  only  a  destruction- 
ist,  and  destructionists  are  always 
plenty  and  cheap.  The  hand  that 
wrote  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence  was  not  the  hand  to  frame 
the  Federal  Constitution.  Samuel 
Adams  knew  far  better  how  to 

[13] 


LINCOLN 

knock  down  King  George  than  how 
to  set  up  George  Washington,  first 
President  of  a  great  nation.  Pat 
rick  Henry  could  shout  in  a  tem 
pest  of  eloquence,  "Give  me  liberty 
or  give  me  death!"  but  he  was 
scarcely  less  eloquent  in  resist 
ing  the  formation  of  the  Federal 
Union;  while  James  Monroe,  the 
reputed  author  of  the  "  Monroe 
Doctrine,"  was  very  sure  the  adop 
tion  of  the  Federal  Constitution 
would  endanger,  if  not  entirely  de 
stroy,  the  people's  liberties. 

In  this  critical  period  two  con 
flicting  theories  of  government 
contended  for  mastery  in  the  Amer 
ican  colonies.  One  side,  led  by 
Washington,  Hamilton,  Franklin, 
Madison,  Jay,  Marshall,  and  their 

[14] 


co-workers,  realized  the  supreme 
importance  of  a  strong  central  au 
thority — a  firm  union  of  the  States 
under  one  stable  government. 
With  the  true  national  instinct 
they  appealed  earnestly  to  the  pa 
triotism  and  good  sense  of  their 
fellow-citizens.  By  bitter  experi 
ence  they  knew  the  evils  of  a  many- 
headed  confederacy  of  weak  and 
discordant  States,  which,  if  not 
fused  together,  they  knew  would 
waste  all  their  energies  in  jealous 
bickerings  with  each  other,  pre 
senting  to  the  nations  of  the  world 
no  broad  frontage  of  sovereignty 
and  power.  They  knew  a  weak 
government  would  produce  confu 
sion  at  home  and  breed  contempt 
abroad,  and,  worse  than  all,  would 

[15] 


LI        N        C        0        L        N 

constantly  invite  foreign  alliance 
and  intervention,  to  the  final  de 
struction  of  that  independence 
which  had  been  purchased  with  so 
much  treasure  and  blood.  The  old 
Federalists  garnered  and  preserved 
the  fruits  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion.  They  believed  that  so  long  as 
a  government  is  "of  the  people" 
and  "by  the  people"  it  will  not 
cease  to  be  also  "for  the  people." 
The  outcry  of  that  day  against 
"consolidated  government,"  with 
which  ambitious  demagogues  were 
frightening  the  ignorant,  did  not 
alarm  the  old  Federalists,  who 
were  the  true  friends  of  the  people 
and  the  real  Republicans  of  their 
day. 

Such  was  the  character  of  the 

[16] 


LINCOLN 

party  which  bore  us  through  the 
critical  period  of  our  early  history, 
leaving  us  as  a  legacy  the  Federal 
Union,  which  Lincoln,  with  the 
help  of  the  Union  army,  saved. 

Opposed  to  the  Federalists,  how 
ever,  was  another  party  of  polit 
ical  philosophers,  who,  in  their 
dread  of  centralization,  opposed 
the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Con 
stitution.  In  the  days  of  war  they 
had  been  good  destroyers,  but  they 
were  not  equally  good  as  builders. 
The  wrongs  they  had  suffered  un 
der  King  George  not  unnaturally 
led  them  to  distrust  all  forms  of 
government,  hence  centralization 
meant  to  them  only  a  renewal  of 
despotism.  They  thought  the  peo 
ple's  only  safeguard  lay  in  the 

[17] 


LINCOLN 

weakness  of  the  central  govern 
ment. 

That  was  an  age  in  which  the  in 
fection  of  " red  republicanism"  was 
abroad  in  the  world.  Eousseau 
had  dreamed  intoxicating  and 
contagious  dreams.  Voltaire  had 
philosophized  and  sneered.  The 
mad  re -action  against  long -abused 
power  had  come,  and  in  France  the 
chasm  W7as  already  opening  to  en 
gulf  the  monstrosities  of  ages. 
Alexander  Hamilton's  wise  saying 
that  "the  vigor  of  government  is 
essential  to  the  security  of  liberty," 
was  then,  as  a  consequence,  far  less 
appreciated  than  it  is  to-day. 

In  1787,  however,  the  country 
was  prostrate  and  the  tottering  old 
Confederation  was  powerless  to 

[18] 


LINCOLN 

give  relief.  Riot,  repudiation,  and 
anarchy  were  in  the  very  air.  As 
a  choice  of  evils  the  people  at  last, 
with  many  misgivings,  accepted  the 
Union.  But  it  was  power  grudg 
ingly  given,  and  repented  by  many 
of  the  rampant  revolutionists  of 
that  day  almost  as  quickly  as 
bestowed. 

The  heresy  of  1787,  that  the  best 
government  is  the  weakest  govern 
ment,  and  that  whatever  govern 
ment  we  have  should  be  distrusted 
by  the  people  and  hampered  as 
much  as  possible  in  its  action,  in 
order  to  insure  the  liberty  of  the 
individual,  survived  in  the  form  of 
" State  sovereignty"  to  produce  in 
finite  mischief  during  full  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  of  our  sub- 

[19] 


LINCOLN 

sequent  history.  Attempts  were 
made,  after  the  Constitution  was 
adopted,  to  practically  nullify  it  by 
what  was  called  "  strict  construc 
tion.  "  The  theory  was  held,  that 
each  State  of  the  Union  had  the 
right  to  judge  for  itself  what  pow 
ers  were  conferred  by  the  Constitu 
tion  upon  the  national  government. 
Such  was,  in  effect,  the  doctrine  of 
the  "  Virginia  and  Kentucky  Reso 
lutions,"  and  it  was  a  doctrine  sin 
cerely  advocated  in  that  day  by 
many  men  who  were  really  at 
tached  to  the  cause  of  civil  liberty, 
but  who  seemed  not  to  know  the 
means  by  which,  alone,  can  liberty 
be  insured.* 

*  Thomas  Jefferson  lived  and  died  in  the  be 
lief  that  each  State  of  the  Union  was  a  sovereign 
nation,  and  that  these  several  nations  had,  by 

[20] 


LINCOLN 

Later,  the  motives  of  the  foes  of 
nationality  changed.  The  slavery 
question  arose,  and  "  strict  con 
struction"  and  " State  rights"— 
at  first  largely  speculative  political 
doctrines — became  the  pretext  for 
the  slave  power's  frantic  effort  to 
fortify  and  intrench  slavery.  Ac 
cordingly,  in  1861,  the  old  slavoc- 
racy  of  the  South,  after  long 
threats,  resolved  to  trample  down 


adopting  the  Constitution,  formed  a  compact  —  a 
sort  of  treaty  —  which  each  of  the  States  had  a 
right  to  construe  for  itself,  there  being  no  com 
mon  judicial  power  over  them.  On  April  8,  1826, 
less  than  three  months  before  he  died,  Jeffer 
son  wrote  a  letter  —  being  the  last  but  four  of 
those  preserved  in  his  Works  —  in  which  letter  he 
said:  "  I  think  with  you,  also,  that  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States  is  a  compact  of  inde 
pendent  nations,  subject  to  the  rules  acknowledged 
in  similar  cases,  as  well  that  of  amendment  pro 
vided  within  itself,  as,  in  case  of  abuse,  the  justly 
dreaded  but  unavoidable  ultimo  ratio  gentium. ' ' 
—Jefferson's  Works  (Putnam),  col.  10,  p,  385. 

[21] 


LINCOLN 

the  government  of  George  Wash 
ington  and  the  grand  old  Federal 
ists,  and  upon  its  ruins  to  erect  a 
slave  confederacy.  And  then  it  was 
that  the  Union  army,  called  into 
being  by  Abraham  Lincoln  and  act 
ing  under  his  sagacious  policy,  met 
and  slew  together  both  slavery  and 
State  sovereignty.  In  the  fierce 
arbitrament  of  war,  and  through 
the  terrific  adjudication  of  force 
and  blood,  the  Federal  Constitu 
tion  at  length  received  its  final  and 
authoritative  construction. 

T  THUS  recapitulate  facts  well 
known  merely  to  show  that  in 
the  constitutional  development  of 
the  nation  Abraham  Lincoln  stands 
in  line  of  direct  succession  from 

[22] 


LINCOLN 

those  great  constructive  statesmen 
who  formed  and  set  in  operation 
the  government  of  the  United 
States.  He  finished  their  great 
work.  In  the  highest  sense  he  was 
himself  a  constructive  statesman. 
He  was  a  conservative,  a  saviour 
— not  a  destroyer.  He  stands  pre 
eminently  for  law  and  order,  for 
the  conservation  of  popular  insti 
tutions,  for  human  rights  secured 
and  enforced — not  by  somebody's 
uncertain  impulse,  but  guaranteed 
by  inexorable  public  law. 

Back  of  Lincoln  we  see,  among 
many  others,  Washington,  Madi 
son,  Franklin,  Gouverneur  Morris, 
John  Jay,  Robert  Morris,  and  that 
other  colossus  of  American  states 
manship,  Alexander  Hamilton.  But 

[23] 


LINCOLN 

between  these  men  and  Lincoln 
were  many  others  conspicuous  for 
great  services  rendered  to  the  same 
great  cause.  John  Marshall,  of 
Virginia,  statesman  and  judge  — 
belonging  in  a  degree  to  both  pe 
riods  —  who  for  thirty-four  years, 
as  head  of  the  Federal  judiciary, 
read  " between  the  lines"  of  the 
Constitution,  and  found  there  the 
" implied  powers"  by  the  exercise 
of  which  Lincoln  was  at  length  able 
to  save  the  Union;  Andrew  Jack 
son,  who  laid  low  beneath  the  man 
date  of  his  imperious  will  the  first 
outbreak  against  national  sover 
eignty,  arousing  by  his  appeal  to 
the  people  of  South  Carolina  a  na 
tional  enthusiasm  which  had  not 
yet  spent  itself  when  Lincoln  de- 

[24] 


LINCOLN 

livered  his  First  Inaugural;  Henry 
Clay,  the  greatest  of  parliamentary 
leaders,  who  applied  his  rare  pow 
ers  to  the  healing  expedient  of  com 
promise,  thus  relieving  the  strain 
until  the  cement  of  the  Union  had 
time  to  set  and  become  firm;  Daniel 
Webster,  the  invincible  defender 
of  the  Constitution,  who  in  debate 
combined  the  strength  of  Goliath 
and  the  skill  of  David,  overwhelm 
ing  the  enemies  of  the  Union  with 
torrents  of  logic  and  eloquence; 
Thomas  H.  Benton,  the  sturdy  and 
truculent  old  patriot,  himself  rep 
resenting  a  slave  State,  whose 
every  heart-throb  was  true  to  the 
nation  he  served  —  all  these  great 
nationalists,  and  many  others 
equally  devoted  though  perhaps 

[25] 


LINCOLN 

less  conspicuous,  had  consecrated 
themselves  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  union  of  the  States.  But  to 
Abraham  Lincoln,  among  them  all, 
it  was  given  to  act  and  suffer  in  the 
fierce  heat  and  light  of  terrific  and 
final  conflict.  From  the  cross  of 
national  redemption  whereon  he 
agonized,  was  at  length  borne  away 
forever  the  great  sin  of  disunion, 
which  like  a  malignant  spirit  had 
so  long  rent  our  fair  land. 

T)  UT  the  field  of  Lincoln's  states 
manship  embraced  more  than 
a  mere  constitutional  doctrine.  The 
destruction  of  the  Union  as  a  polit 
ical  end,  without  an  ulterior  object 
in  view,  would,  in  1861,  have  been 
sheer  madness,  however  doubtful 

[26] 


LINCOLN 

the  policy  of  its  original  formation 
might  have  seemed  to  some  of  the 
colonists.  In  1860  the  nation  had 
demonstrated  its  right  to  live,  and 
but  for  the  slave  interest  the  doc 
trine  of  State  sovereignty  would 
have  died  with  the  generation  that 
wrote  and  adopted  the  "  Virginia 
and  Kentucky  Resolutions."  It 
was  because  the  Union -had  proved 
less  subservient  to  the  slave  inter 
est  than  was  desired,  that  the 
South,  by  a  convenient  application 
of  this  doctrine  of  State  rights, 
sought  to  disrupt  the  Union  and 
set  up  a  distinctive  slave  confed 
eracy.  The  constitutional  question 
and  the  slavery  question  were  thus 
thrown  together  into  the  crucible 
of  war. 

[27] 


LINCOLN 

The  Republicans,  in  1860,  had 
no  purpose  to  abolish  slavery,  nor 
was  it  the  then -avowed  principles 
of  that  party  which  slaveholders 
feared.  Far  more  ominous  than  the 
platform  of  any  political  party  was 
the  moral  sentiment  of  the  civilized 
world  which  the  South  saw  every 
where  rising  against  her  favorite 
institution.  The  fact  that  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin"  found  millions  of 
eager  readers,  both  in  Europe  and 
America,  was  to  Southern  states 
men  far  more  disquieting  than  any 
party  declaration.  Adverse  public 
opinion — that  universal  solvent  of 
modern  democracy — threatened  to 
dissolve  the  very  rock  upon  which 
the  industrial  and  social  institu 
tions  of  the  South  had  been  built. 

[28] 


L        I        N        C        O        L        N 

The  high  falsetto  which  a  few  abo 
litionists  were  singing  would  have 
excited  only  contempt  in  the  South 
but  for  the  contagion  which,  in 
spite  of  all  Northern  assurances, 
was  known  to  be  in  that  cry.  The 
South  knew  abolition  fire  was  fall 
ing  upon  tinder,  not  only  all  over 
the  North  but  all  over  the  world; 
and,  morals  aside,  there  was  real 
wisdom  in  the  plan  of  forming  a 
new  government,  of  which  slavery 
should  be  the  corner  stone.  An  in 
stitution  like  slavery  must  be  the 
corner  stone  or  nothing. 

Lincoln  was  not  less  opposed  to 
slavery  on  moral  grounds  than  any 
man  in  the  nation,  but  when  he  de 
clared  he  had  no  constitutional 
power,  and  therefore  no  purpose,  to 

[29] 


LINCOLN 

interfere  with  slavery  in  the  South 
ern  States,  he  was  perfectly  con 
scientious.  When  the  War  came 
on,  Lincoln  ceased  to  speak  of  slav 
ery  and  spoke  only  of  the  Union. 
He  always  seized  upon  the  largest 
fact.  He  knew,  if  the  old  abolition 
ists  did  not,  that  national  preserva 
tion  was  the  real  stake  in  that  con 
test.  As  Chief  Executive  he  right 
ly  disclaimed  jurisdiction  over  slav 
ery  in  time  of  peace,  but  I  think  he 
never  doubted  his  right,  as  Com 
mander-in-chief  of  the  Army  and 
Navy,  to  save  the  Union  by  any 
means  fitting  and  necessary  to  ac 
complish  that  end — even  to  the  de 
struction  of  slavery  by  an  execu 
tive  proclamation. 

The  idea  of  emancipation  seemed 

[30] 


LINCOLN 

to  grow  upon  Lincoln  through  the 
early  months  of  1862,  and  by  mid 
summer  of  that  year  his  course  was 
determined.  Starting  out  only  to 
preserve  the  Union,  Lincoln,  by 
force  of  circumstances  and  through 
the  inexorable  logic  of  events,  be 
came  the  liberator  of  a  race.  He 
was  the  most  modest  of  men,  and 
distinctly  disclaimed  any  personal 
credit  for  emancipation.  He  wrote, 
in  April,  1864,  "I  claim  not  to  have 
controlled  events,  but  confess  plain 
ly  that  events  have  controlled  me." 
This  was  honest  and  it  was  true,  for 
in  the  stress  of  war,  events,  under 
a  popular  government,  must  to  a 
large  extent  control  everybody.  In 
the  same  letter,  further  discussing 
the  credit  for  emancipation,  he  rev- 

[31] 


LINCOLN 

erently  said,  "God  alone  can  claim 
it." 

Exactly  one  month  before  the 
preliminary  Proclamation  was  is 
sued,  Lincoln  had  written  to  Hor 
ace  Greeley  these  ever-memorable 
words : 

"  If  there  be  those  who  would  not  save  the 
Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same  time 
save  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  If 
there  be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union 
unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  destroy 
slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  My  para 
mount  object  is  to  save  the  Union,  and  not 
either  to  save  or  destroy  slavery." 

It  argues  nothing  against  Lin 
coln's  sincerity  that  when  he  wrote 
the  words  above  quoted,  the  draft 
of  the  great  Proclamation  was  ly 
ing  in  his  desk  awaiting  only  a 
Union  victory  to  precede  its  issu- 

[32] 


LINCOLN 

ance,  in  order  that  it  might  not 
seem  to  the  public  to  be  a  mere  des 
perate  expedient.  Indeed,  the  stu 
dent  of  Lincoln's  writings  cannot 
fail  to  see  that  at  least  as  early  as 
March,  1862 — fully  five  months  be 
fore  he  wrote  this  letter  to  Greeley 
— Lincoln  had  come  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  the  War  must  in  the  end 
be  given  a  turn  that  would  destroy 
slavery,  not  merely  to  gratify  his 
personal  wish  in  the  matter,  much 
as  he  hated  slavery,  but  because  of 
the  inexorable  logic  of  events. 

On  April  4,  1864,  he  wrote  to  A. 
G.  Hodges  these  words,  "I  aver 
that,  to  this  day,  I  have  done  no 
official  act  in  mere  deference  to  my 
abstract  judgment  and  feeling  on 
slavery. " 

[33] 


LINCOLN 

Lincoln  was  not  an  idealist.  He 
was  not  one  of  those  moral  egotists 
who  are  wont  to  set  their  own  scru 
ples  of  conscience  above  statutes. 
By  nature  a  conservative,  he  would 
not  resort  to  revolutionary  meas 
ures  under  guise  of  law.  He  was,  in 
fact,  the  highest  example  of  a  con 
stitutional  ruler.  When  the  hour 
came  that  emancipation  might  fair 
ly  be  judged  a  military  necessity, 
and  when  the  public  opinion  of  the 
loyal  States  was  ready  to  accept  it 
as  such,  then,  and  not  before,  Lin 
coln  meant  to  strike  slavery  down. 
The  time  at  length  came,  and  Lin 
coln  struck  the  blow  which  has  re 
sounded  many  times  round  the 
world;  and  thus  what  seems  one  of 
the  most  radical  measures  of  Amer- 

[34] 


LINCOLN 

lean  history  came,  in  fact,  from  one 
of  the  most  conservative  and  cau 
tious  minds  which  ever  ruled  in  our 
councils. 

RELIEVING  firmly  the  time 
would  soon  come  when  eman 
cipation  must  be  proclaimed,  Lin 
coln  had  long  been  earnestly — al 
most  pathetically — urging  the  bor 
der  States  to  themselves  adopt 
gradual  emancipation  and  take 
compensation  for  their  slaves.  He 
procured  the  passage  of  an  Act  or 
Resolution  by  Congress  under 
which  they  could  have  done  this; 
and,  in  a  Proclamation  upon  the 
subject,  issued  May  19, 1862,  he  elo 
quently  said: 

"To  the  people  of  these  [border]   States 
I   now  earnestly   appeal.    I  do  not  argue  — 

[35] 


LINCOLN 

I  beseech  you  to  make  the  argument  for 
yourselves.  You  cannot,  if  you  would,  be 
blind  to  the  signs  of  the  times.  .  . 
This  proposal  makes  common  cause  for  a 
common  object.  ...  It  acts  not  the 
Pharisee.  ...  So  much  good  has  not 
been  done  by  one  effort  in  all  past  time  as 
in  the  providence  of  God  it  is  now  your  high 
privilege  to  do.  May  the  vast  future  not 
have  to  lament  that  you  have  neglected  it." 

Again,  to  the  Senators  and  Rep 
resentatives  of  the  border  States, 
in  July,  1862,  he  addressed  a  letter, 
in  which,  among  other  things,  he 
told  them  the  War  would  soon  de 
stroy  slavery  in  their  States  "by 
mere  friction  and  abrasion."  He 
told  them  much  of  the  value  of 
slave  property  was  already  gone, 
and  urged  them  to  favor  compen 
sated  emancipation;  and  then,  with 
that  terseness  and  force  of  which 

[36] 


LINCOLN 

he  was  so  great  a  master,  he  added, 
"How  much  better  for  you,  as 
seller,  and  the  nation,  as  buyer,  to 
sell  out  and  buy  out  that  without 
which  the  War  never  could  have 
been,  than  to  sink  both  the  thing 
to  be  sold,  and  the  price  of  it,  in 
cutting  one  another's  throats." 

It  seems  incredible,  in  the  light 
of  events,  that  such  appeals  to  the 
good  sense  and  the  true  interests 
of  the  border  States  could  have 
fallen  upon  deaf  ears,  and  the  fact 
that  Lincoln's  border  State  policy 
was  scoffed  at  alike  by  those  it  was 
intended  to  benefit  and  by  those 
Northern  idealists — such  as  Hor 
ace  Greeley  and  Wendell  Phillips, 
who  were  always  ready  to  burn 
other  people  upon  the  pyre  of  their 

[37] 


LINCOLN 

immolating  goodness — only  serves 
to  illustrate  the  deep  intrenchment 
of  slavery  in  the  popular  interest 
and  prejudice.  If  Lincoln  could, 
in  the  Spring  of  1862,  have  wrested 
from  all  future  sympathy  with  the 
Rebellion,  those  slave  States  which 
remained  in  the  Union,  by  inducing 
them  to  voluntarily  adopt  emanci 
pation,  by  that  very  act  the  great 
game  would  have  been  won.  Had 
the  one  State  of  Kentucky  heeded 
Lincoln's  appeal  and  voluntarily 
abolished  slavery,  it  would  have 
been  a  moral  blow  more  decisive 
than  many  military  victories, 
which  would  indeed  have  shaken 
the  Southern  Confederacy  to  its 
very  foundations.  Lincoln  saw  this 
clearly,  but  his  critics  among  the 

[38] 


LINCOLN 

Northern  radicals  seemed  utterly 
incapable  of  appreciating  his  "  bor 
der  State  policy."  Greeley,  about 
this  time,  said  in  the  Tribune,  that 
when  Lincoln  prayed  he  said,  "0 
Lord,  I  would  like  to  have  You  on 
my  side,  but,  0  Lord,  I  just  must 
have  Kentucky."  Lincoln's  great 
anxiety  that  citizens  of  the  loyal 
slave  States  should  receive  pay  for 
their  slaves  gave  rise  to  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson's  celebrated  epi 
gram,  - 

"  Pay  the  owner  for  the  slave, 

And  fill  the  bag  to  the  brim ; 
Who  is  the  owner?    The  slave  is  the  owner 
And  ever  was ;  pay  him  !  " 

Lincoln  had  always  realized  that 
to  check  the  spread  of  slavery  was 
a  long  step  toward  its  abolition.  In 

[39] 


LINCOLN 

1858  he  wisely  said  the  country 
must  ultimately  become  "all  one 
thing  or  all  the  other."  The  wise 
men  of  the  South  clearly  saw  this 
was  true,  and  acted  upon  it.  Had 
slavery  from  the  first  been  freely 
admitted  to  all  our  new  Territories, 
it  would  soon  have  become  na 
tional,  and  Robert  Toombs  might 
have  fulfilled  a  threat  he  is  said  to 
have  made,  that  he  would  some  day 
call  the  roll  of  his  slaves  at  the  foot 
of  Bunker  Hill  monument.  On  the 
other  hand,  had  slavery  been  strict 
ly  confined  to  the  area  it  occupied 
prior  to  1820,  emancipation  would 
probably  have  come  long  before 
this  time,  even  had  there  been  no 
war. 

[40] 


LINCOLN 

TN  proclaiming  freedom  Lincoln 
is  commonly  thought  to  have 
reached  the  summit  of  his  moral 
grandeur.  The  act  was  certainly 
great  in  itself,  and  equally  great  in 
the  manner  of  its  accomplishment. 
It  was  natural,  however,  that  ad 
mirers  of  the  great  anti-slavery 
agitators  should  dispute  Lincoln's 
title  to  the  historic  credit  for  eman 
cipation.  Many  thought  Lincoln's 
Proclamation  lost  its  moral  grand 
eur  in  the  fact  that  it  was  issued 
under  the  force  of  military  neces 
sity,  and  thus  became  a  mere  inci 
dent  in  the  preservation  of  the 
Union.  I  must,  however,  dissent 
from  this  view,  and  insist  that 
Abraham  Lincoln's  abolitionism 
did  not  lose  its  ethical  quality  in  its 

[41] 


LINCOLN 

respect  for  established  law  and  in 
its  well-tempered  expediency.  Any 
fool  could  shout  and  say  slavery 
must  be  abolished,  but  it  took  a 
statesman  to  find  a  way  to  abolish 
it.  The  old  abolitionists  blew  the 
reckless  clarion  blast  which 
alarmed  the  Northern  conscience 
and  precipitated  the  conflict.  The 
flashlight  of  their  audacious  and 
consuming  eloquence  fell  upon 
slavery  and  revealed  its  enormity. 
But  the  man  who  marshalled  and 
led  the  material  and  moral  forces 
which  finally  crushed  the  Rebellion 
and  destroyed  slavery  had  need  to 
be  something  more  than  a  reckless 
agitator. 

Prominent  in  our  War  period, 
upon  the  Northern  side,  were  many 

[42] 


LINCOLN 

idealists,  among  whom  some  of  the 
old  " higher  law"  abolitionists  were 
the  purest  types.  An  idealist  (to 
depart  somewhat  from  the  lexi 
cons)  is  one  who  counts  his  chick 
ens  before  the  eggs  have  been  laid. 
He  is  lacking  in  a  sense  of  the  pro 
portion  and  relation  of  things,  and 
takes  himself  so  seriously  that  he 
loses  the  power  of  seeing  the  actual 
situation.  In  the  last  analysis  he 
lacks  humor.  In  the  rapturous  con 
templation  of  the  end  he  forgets  all 
about  means.  The  Northern  ideal 
ists,  or  radicals,  thought  that  if 
Lincoln  would  only  sound  a  great 
blast  upon  a  ram's  horn  all  the 
walls  of  the  Jericho  of  Rebellion 
would  fall  flat.  Acknowledging  no 
responsibility,  these  men  could  talk 

[43] 


LINCOLN 

much  nonsense  without  having  to 
account  for  the  folly  of  their 
speech. 

Lincoln,  however,  was  President, 
and  as  such  he  felt  gravely  respon 
sible  to  the  country  for  his  every 
act  and  word.  He  did  not  fly 
through  the  air  with  the  theorists, 
but  walked  slowly  and  painfully 
upon  the  ground — and  rough,  in 
deed,  was  his  footing.  He  walked 
among  the  " plain  people,"  and 
communed  with  them  day  by  day; 
and  as  he  walked  he  took  note  of 
all  the  rocks  and  chasms  and  quag 
mires  which  lay  in  his  pathway- 
little  matters,  for  which  the  mere 
theorists  felt  only  contempt. 

The  truth  is,  the  old  abolitionists 
had  so  long  combated  a  majority 

[44] 


LINCOLN 

upon  the  slavery  issue  that  they 
could  not  appreciate  the  wisdom  of 
a  President  who  waited  for  the  con 
currence  of  a  majority  before  act 
ing.  To  Wendell  Phillips  the  agi 
tator,  delivering  a  philippic  against 
slavery,  the  approval  of  a  majority 
wras  not  necessary.  His  tempera 
ment  was  such  that  the  violent 
opposition  of  numbers  acted  upon 
him  as  a  stimulant.  But  to  Lincoln 
the  President,  formulating  and  en 
forcing  practical  measures  of  gov 
ernment  for  a  sovereign  people,  the 
moral  support  of  public  opinion 
was  an  absolute  necessity.  Those 
who,  almost  before  Lincoln's  right 
hand  was  lowered,  insisted  that  he 
should  abandon  the  Constitution  he 
had  sworn  to  support,  and  resort 

[45] 


LINCOLN 

to  that  vague  delusion  called  the 
" higher  law" — without  any  then 
apparent  military  necessity — had 
little  appreciation  of  the  man  or 
the  occasion.  In  the  days  of  war 
most  of  these  men  went  their  own 
wild,  unreasoning  way,  and  heaped 
obloquy  upon  the  man  who  was 
completing  their  work  in  the  only 
possible  way  it  could  then  have 
been  completed. 

The  distinct  issue  on  which  Lin 
coln  won  the  presidency  was  the 
prevention  of  the  spread  of  slavery 
— not  its  abolition — and  on  that 
issue  he  received  less  than  one-half 
of  the  popular  vote,  excluding  from 
the  calculation  the  votes  of  the 
States  that  afterwards  seceded. 
However  great  may  be  the  wonder 

[46] 


LINCOLN 

of  it  in  the  light  of  events,  the  fact 
is  that  a  large  majority  of  the 
whole  American  people  stood,  in 
1861,  against  Lincoln's  moderate 
personal  views  on  the  slavery  ques 
tion.  Out  of  twenty-three  Chris 
tian  ministers  residing  in  Spring 
field,  Illinois,  in  1860,  twenty  were 
opposed  to  the  election  of  Lincoln.* 
A  quarrel  between  two  factions  of 
the  Democratic  party  as  to  the  par 
ticular  degree  of  legal  encourage 
ment  slavery  should  receive  in  its 
struggle  for  territory  and  suprem 
acy  had  resulted  in  Lincoln's  elec 
tion.  No  wonder  he  refused  to  at 


*  This  statement  is  based  on  the  language  of 
Lincoln  himself,  as  Hon.  Newton  Bateman,  then 
Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction  in  Illinois, 
reported  to  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland.  —  Holland  's  ' '  Life 
of  Lincoln,"  page  236. 

[47] 


L       I        N        C        O       L       N 

once  launch  an  emancipation  policy 
when  even  his  own  moderate  prin 
ciple  of  slavery- restriction  could 
scarcely  be  sustained. 

Lincoln  was  acquainted,  perhaps 
better  than  any  other  public  man, 
with  that  prejudice  whidi  in  those 
days  often  led  even  good  Union 
men,  in  the  Western  States,  to  de 
clare  they  would  not  support  an 
" abolition  war."  He  knew  many 
good  friends  of  the  Union  believed 
that  emancipation  would  be  fol 
lowed  by  a  horrible  war  of  races,  or 
by  a  still  more  horrible  amalgama 
tion  of  whites  and  blacks.  To  such 
he  held  out  his  zealous  but  imprac 
ticable  scheme  of  colonizing  the 
negroes  in  South  America  or 
Africa.  It  was  exactly  because  Lin- 

[48] 


LINCOLN 

coin's    early    associations   had   so 
thoroughly  familiarized  him  with 
the  prejudice  which  used  to  fairly 
shudder  at  sound  of  the  then -cur 
rent  phrase  " nigger   equality" 
nay,  because  he  even  partook  in  a 
degree  of  that  prejudice  himself  - 
that  he  proved  the  fittest  man  to 
stand  at  the  helm. 

Lincoln  thrust  forward  the 
Union  issue  because  he  knew  there 
were  at  least  twenty  men  in  the 
North  for  the  Union  where  there 
was  one  for  emancipation.  The 
boast,  early  made,  that  a  united 
South  would  be  hurled  against  a 
divided  North,  was,  upon  the  slav 
ery  question,  fully  realized.  Lin 
coln's  party  was  distinctly  pledged 
not  to  disturb  slavery  in  the  States 

[49] 


LINCOLN 

where  it  existed,  and  the  pro-slav 
ery  Unionist  was  as  vehement  in 
urging  the  sanctity  of  this  promise 
as  the  Eastern  radical  was  in  de 
claring  that  treason  had  put  slav 
ery  beyond  constitutional  protec 
tion. 

When  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation  was  at  length  issued  it  was 
bitterly  assailed  as  a  revolutionary 
subversion  of  the  Constitution,  and 
yet  it  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that 
none  of  his  critics  ever  stated  the 
legal  case  against  emancipation  so 
strongly  or  so  well  as  Lincoln  once 
stated  it  himself.  To  0.  H.  Brown 
ing,  who  scolded  him  for  revoking 
Fremont's  Emancipation  Procla 
mation,  on  September  22,  1861,  he 
wrote: 

[50] 


LINCOLN 

"If  the  general  needs  them  [the  slaves] 
he  can  seize  them  and  use  them,  but  when 
the  need  is  past  it  is  not  for  him  to  fix  their 
permanent  future  condition.  That  must  be 
settled  according  to  the  laws  made  by  law 
makers,  and  not  by  military  proclamations. 
The  proclamation  on  the  point  in  question  is 
simply  dictatorship.  It  assumes  that  the 
general  may  do  anything  he  pleases:  con 
fiscate  the  lands  and  free  the  slaves  of  loyal 
people  as  well  as  of  disloyal  ones.  And  going 
the  whole  figure,  I  have  no  doubt,  would  be 
more  popular  with  some  thoughtless  people 
than  that  which  has  been  done.  But  I  can 
not  assume  this  reckless  position  nor  allow 
others  to  assume  it  on  my  responsibility. 
You  speak  of  it  as  being  the  only  means 
of  saving  the  government.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is,  itself,  a  surrender  of  the  government. 
Can  it  be  pretended  that  it  is  any  longer  the 
government  of  the  United  States  —  any  gov 
ernment  of  Constitution  and  laws  —  wherein 
a  general  or  President  may  make  permanent 
rules  of  property  by  proclamation?  .  . 
What  I  object  to  is,  that  I,  as  President, 
shall  expressly  or  impliedly  seize  and  exercise 
the  permanent  legislative  functions  of  the 
government." 

[51] 


LINCOLN 

This  whole  letter  to  Browning  is 
most  interesting  in  a  study  of  the 
development  of  the  emancipation 
policy,  and  should  be  compared 
with  his  Proclamation  annulling 
the  emancipation  edict  of  Gen. 
Hunter,  eight  months  later,  May 
19,  1862.  In  the  latter  he  says: 

"Whether  it  be  competent  for  me,  as 
Commander-in-chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy, 
to  declare  the  slaves  of  any  State  or  States 
free,  and  whether  at  any  time,  in  any  case, 
it  shall  have  become  a  necessity  indispensable 
to  the  maintenance  of  the  government  to 
exercise  such  supposed  power,  are  questions 
which,  under  my  responsibility,  I  reserve  to 
myself  and  which  I  cannot  feel  justified  in 
leaving  to  the  decision  of  commanders  in  the 
field." 

Here  was  a  distinct  advance  upon 
the  position  announced  in  the 
Browning  letter.  He  had  found 

[52] 


LINCOLN 

the  true  basis  for  his  emancipation 
policy,  and  only  awaited  the  devel 
opment  of  public  opinion  and  the 
march  of  events. 

T  INCOLN  had  the  sense  to  keep 
his  eye  upon  great  facts  and 
to  reckon  with  large  causes.  He 
was  sagacious  enough  to  perceive 
that  the  supreme  issue  of  the  strug 
gle  was  national  preservation,  and 
that  this  issue  embraced  the  slav 
ery  question  and  all  others.  Gree- 
ley's  silly  advice  to  let  the  South 
ern  States  "go  in  peace,"  and  Wen 
dell  Phillips'  still  more  pictur 
esque  folly  that  we  would  "  build  a 
bridge  of  gold  and  pay  their  toll 
over  it,"  could  meet  no  favor  in  a 
mind  so  sane  as  Lincoln's.  He 

[53] 


LINCOLN 

knew  if  the  government  proved 
strong  enough  to  cope  with  the  Re 
bellion  it  would,  in  the  end,  prove 
strong  enough  to  deal  with  slavery 
and  ultimately  abolish  it  by  peace 
ful  means.  He  said  in  his  Peoria 
speech,  in  1854,  "Much  as  I  hate 
slavery,  I  would  consent  to  the  ex 
tension  of  it  rather  than  see  the 
Union  dissolved,  just  as  I  would 
consent  to  any  great  evil  to  avoid  a 
greater  one. ' '  From  this  sentiment 
he  never  receded. 

Had  the  Southern  people  ac 
quiesced  in  Lincoln's  election  and 
in  the  supremacy  of  his  doctrines 
they  would  certainly  have  pro 
longed  slavery,  and  in  the  end,  per 
haps,  have  insured  a  liberal  com 
pensation  for  their  slaves.  But 

[54] 


LINCOLN 

ultimately   either  slavery   or  the 
Union  had  to  go  down. 

T  HAVE  sometimes  thought  that 
Lincoln,  with  prophetic  eye, 
saw  the  destruction  of  slavery  from 
the  very  beginning,  but  with  a  pa 
tience  and  self-control  which  find 
no  parallel  awaited  the  slow  turn 
ing  of  the  mills  of  the  gods.  He  had 
the  large  sense  to  perceive  that  the 
spirit  of  the  times  would  in  the  end 
abolish  slavery,  and  that  to  force 
the  issue  would  only  insure  the  suc 
cess  of  the  Confederacy.  He  rec 
ognized  a  plan  higher  than  human 
plans.  He  knew  when  he  wrote 
the  Greeley  letter  that  the  march 
of  events  had  put  it  past  human 
power  to  save  slavery  with  the 

[55] 


LINCOLN 

Union.    He  felt  that  a  hand  might 
ier  than  his  own  was  writing  the 
doom  of  slavery  upon  the  fiery  war- 
cloud,    and   so   believing,   and   so 
praying,  too,  he  patiently  accepted 
criticism,  and  even  calumny — first 
from  the  extreme  abolitionists  and 
afterwards   from   the   pro-slavery 
Unionists.    He  knew  a  premature 
expression,  officially,  of  his  belief 
that  the  War  was  destined  to  de 
stroy  slavery  would  probably  take 
from  the  Union  army  a  hundred 
thousand  bayonets,  and  that  this 
might  turn  the   tide   against  the 
Union.     Had   the    border    slave 
States  been  repelled  by  the  least 
rudeness  of  treatment  from  the  ad- 
ministration,   the  Union  would 
probably  never  have  been  saved. 
[56] 


LINCOLN 

Lincoln  himself  put  the  case  tersely 
when  he  said  of  the  border  States, 
"With  them  against  us,  the  job  is 
too  big  for  us."  Realizing  that 
public  opinion  was  the  only  effect 
ive  abolitionist,  Lincoln  stayed  his 
pen,  and  allowed  the  Union  volun 
teers  to  write  with  their  bayonets, 
in  the  blood  of  angry  battles,  the 
real  proclamation  of  freedom.  He 
knew  well  that  a  proclamation  so 
written  would  never  need  to  be 
recanted. 

J  N  the  Spring  of  1861  there  were 
many  persons  in  the  North  who 
saw  in  Lincoln  only  a  well-mean 
ing,  shrewd,  but  inexperienced  per 
son,  whose  redeeming  trait,  they 
hoped,  would  prove  to  be  docility. 

[57] 


LINCOLN 

Each  of  these  persons  felt  sure 
Lincoln  would  need  much  sage  ad 
vice,  and  expected  to  supply  it, 
and  even  to  largely  control  his 
administration.  These  self-ap 
pointed  guardians  were  unprepared 
to  receive  a  national  saviour  from 
the  Nazareth  of  the  prairies.  They 
at  once  began  telling  Lincoln  what 
to  do,  and  it  has  been  aptly  said 
he  received  worse  advice,  and  more 
of  it,  than  any  statesman  that  ever 
lived. 

This  will  not  seem  wonderful 
when  we  remember  how  utterly 
the  sudden  rending  of  the  Union 
had  dazed  the  American  people. 
In  the  confusion  of  that  awful  crisis 
even  wise  men  said  and  did  silly 
things.  William  H.  Seward  —  cer- 

[58] 


LINCOLN 

tainly  a  wise  statesman ,  under 
ordinary  conditions  —  in  the  face 
of  threatened  civil  war  lost  both 
heart  and  judgment,  and  gave  Lin 
coln  some  very  bad  and  startling 
advice.  Chase  marred  his  other 
wise  splendid  record  with  queru 
lous  carpings,  all  through  the  War, 
against  a  chief  he  did  not  in  any 
degree  understand  and  whose  su 
perior  he  felt  he  was. 

That  Lincoln,  inexperienced  as 
he  was,  "kept  his  head"  through 
the  panic  of  timidity,  distrust,  and 
hysteria  which  marked  the  early 
months  of  his  administration,  gent 
ly  but  firmly  resisting  the  bad 
advice  which  came  to  him  from  so 
many  high  sources,  is  one  of  the 
strongest  proofs  of  the  firm  texture 

[59] 


L        I        N        C        Q        L       N 

of  his  mind.  To  keep  on  good 
terms  with  advisers  of  assumed  su 
periority  and  at  the  same  time  not 
take  their  advice,  requires  great 
shrewdness  and  tact,  and  no  states 
man  ever  knew  better  how  to  do 
this  than  Lincoln.  He  was  too 
great  to  stand  for  a  moment  upon 
mere  pride  of  opinion.  He  was  al 
ways  read}^  to  hear  advice,  but  his 
ultimate  monitor  was  within.  He 
said,  "It  is  my  duty  to  hear  all,  but 
at  last  I  must,  within  my  sphere, 
judge  what  to  do  and  what  to  for 
bear."  This  self-reliance,  in  prac 
tice,  gave  mortal  offense  to  many 
prominent  Republicans,  who  could 
never  bring  themselves  to  admit 
that  the  basis  of  it  was  real  su 
periority,  and  not  arrogance. 

[00] 


LIN        COIN 

Lincoln  was  ruling  a  democracy, 
and  to  rule  a  real  democracy  in 
volves  problems  never  thought  of 
by  such  rulers  as  Caesar,  Cromwell, 
and   Napoleon.    He   had   a   great 
military    problem,    and    this    was 
complicated  with  a  still  more  per 
plexing  political  problem,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  other  problems  that 
were  presented  by  our  foreign  re 
lations.     An  early  blow  at  slavery, 
it   was  thought,   would   assist   us 
with  foreign  countries,  but  Lin 
coln  knew  such  a  move  would  set 
our  domestic  politics  awry.     His 
first  wise  thought  was  to  keep  the 
peace  among  all  the  adherents  of 
the  Union,  and  the  wise  desire  to 
do  this  furnishes  the  key  to  his 
whole   policy.    He  recognized  no 

[61] 


LINCOLN 

line  of  political  cleavage  save  that 
between  the  loyal  and  the  disloyal. 
He  often  spoke  of  "balancing  mat 
ters,"  and  no  man  ever  knew  bet 
ter  than  he  how  to  strike  the  pru 
dent  average. 

If  any  man  in  this  world  ever 
understood  that  capricious  thing 
called  "public  opinion"  that  man 
was  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  watch 
ed  the  current  of  public  thought 
and  prejudice  as  intently  as  a  cau 
tious  pilot  watches  the  face  of  a 
river  for  evidence  of  bars  and 
snags.  It  has  been  well  said  that 
he  possessed  a  wonderful  sixth 
sense  for  the  feeling  of  the  average 
American.  He  caught  the  faintest 
sound  which  presaged  a  storm  of 
popular  passion,  and  the  sagacity 

[62] 


LINCOLN 

and  skill  with  which  he  avoided 
the  numberless  eddies  and  whirl 
pools  of  the  slavery  question,  while 
steering  on  to  the  great  end  of  na 
tional  preservation,  have,  in  my 
judgment,  never  been  equalled  in 
the  field  of  statesmanship.  Lin 
coln's  exquisite  sense  of  humor 
played  an  important  part  in  saving 
the  Union.  It  kept  him  from  doing 
foolish  things.  He  told  a  delega 
tion  of  Chicago  ministers  who  came 
to  inform  him  that  it  was  " God's 
will"  that  he  should  at  once  launch 
an  emancipation  proclamation,  that 
such  a  measure  would  be  like  the 
Pope's  Bull  against  the  Comet,  be 
cause  it  would  have  no  force  be 
yond  the  military  lines,  and  it 
would  remain  to  enforce  it  by  put- 

[63] 


LINCOLN 

ting  down  the  Rebellion  just  as  lie 
was  striving  to  do.  He  thus  antici 
pated  the  very  criticism  that  was, 
in  fact,  made  in  the  English  news 
papers  when  the  Proclamation  was 
issued:  namely,  that  the  President 
had  assumed  to  abolish  slavery 
everywhere  except  in  the  territory 
where  he  could  have  abolished  it, 
and  had  let  it  alone  in  the  territory 
subject  to  his  jurisdiction. 

The  great  Proclamation  was 
wisely  withheld  until  the  extreme 
anti-slavery  element  in  New  Eng 
land  was  ready  to  break  from  the 
vanguard  of  the  Union  column,  and 
thus  it  came  late  enough  in  the  evo 
lution  of  public  opinion  barely  to 
save  to  the  cause  the  still  more  im 
portant  rear- guard  in  the  border 
and  Western  States. 

[64] 


LINCOLN 

T^HUS  we  see  that  it  was  a  main 
feature  of  Lincoln's  states 
manship  that  he  distinctly  compre 
hended  his  problem;  and  not  only 
his  one  great  problem,  but  all  its 
minor  related  problems.  Such  was 
the  clearness  of  his  vision,  such 
the  breadth  of  his  views,  such  the 
grasp  and  sanity  of  his  judgment, 
that  within  his  policy  all  things 
found  their  proper  place  and  rela 
tion,  and  all  the  din  and  smoke  of 
terrific  conflict  could  not  confuse 
him  or  put  him  from  his  purpose. 
To  use  an  illustration  of  his  own 
kind,  he  never  went  snipe-shooting 
when  there  were  bear  in  sight. 

Lincoln  succeeded  in  holding  the 
border  slave  States  in  line  upon  the 
paramount  Union  issue  even  while 

[65] 


L        I        N        C        0        L        N 

the  institution  of  slavery,  which 
they  wished  to  save,  was  being 
trampled  to  death  beneath  the  feet 
of  the  Union  army.  He  played  the 
eager  Union  sentiment  of  the  West 
against  the  institution  of  slavery, 
which  had  caused  the  War,  until 
the  West  finally  came  to  agree  with 
New  England  that  slavery  must  be 
struck  down.  In  other  words,  Lin 
coln  bridged  with  his  policy  the 
vast  stretch  of  opinion  which  lay 
between  the  rabid  abolitionism  of 
the  East  and  the  pro-slavery 
Unionism  of  the  Western  and  bor 
der  States,  and  thus  he  was  at  last 
able  to  hurl  the  whole  force  of 
Union  sentiment  on  this  side  of  the 
battle  line  against  the  armies  of 
the  Confederacy. 

[66] 


Q 


A  task  so  complex  called  for  a 
statesman  of  broad  views,  great 
self  -poise,  iron  endurance,  and  sub 
lime  courage  —  courage  to  act,  and, 
even  in  a  greater  degree,  courage 
to  forbear.  Struggling,  like  Lao- 
coon,  in  the  serpent-coils  of  the 
slavery  complication,  stung  by  the 
wasps  of  incontinent  radicalism, 
hectored  by  swarms  of  Northern 
men  who  set  the  letter  of  the  Con 
stitution  above  the  nation's  life, 
Lincoln  yet  had  the  monumental 
patience  and  foresight  nearly  al 
ways  to  do  and  say  the  wise  thing. 
"The  occasion  is  piled  high  with 
difficulty,"  said  he,  "and  we  must 
rise  with  the  occasion." 


[67] 


L        I        N        C        0        L        N 

J^INCOLN  'S  search  for  a  gen 
eral  was  long  and  painful  and 
at  first  quite  as  fruitless  as  that  of 
Diogenes  for  an  honest  man — and 
he  carried  a  better  lantern,  too.  A 
few  military  victories  would  have 
cleared  the  atmosphere,  but  when 
Lincoln  asked  his  generals  for  vic 
tories  they  tried  to  swap  jobs  with 
him,  and  gave  him  advice  on  the 
slavery  question.  McClellan,  just 
after  fleeing  in  panic  from  the 
Chickahominy  with  a  magnificent 
army,  which  under  another  com 
mander  might  have  bivouacked  in 
the  Confederate  capital,  found  time 
to  write  Lincoln  a  lengthy  letter  of 
general  advice,  in  which,  among 
many  other  impertinences,  he  said 
"the  abolition  of  slavery  must  not 
be  thought  of." 

[08] 


LINCOLN 

On  the  other  hand,  two  or  three 
of  the  lesser  generals  in  the  field, 
who,  it  must  be  said,  were  not  par 
ticularly  formidable  to  the  com 
mon  enemy,  sought  the  cheap  ap 
plause  of  the  unthinking  by  issu 
ing  proclamations  of  emancipation 
in  their  military  districts,  thus 
adding  to  the  embarrassments  of 
the  one  great,  patient  man  who 
saw  all  the  phases  of  the  Union 
problem. 

T  T  is  quite  the  fashion  to  say  that 
previous  to  1860  Lincoln  had 
not  shown  the  qualities  of  politi 
cal  leadership,  and  that  his  nomi 
nation  for  President  was  merely  a 
happy  accident  of  politics.  Pro 
fessor  Von  Hoist,  in  his  "Consti- 

[09] 


LINCOLN 

tutional  History  of  the  United 
States,"  has  refuted  this  error. 
Lincoln's  nomination  was  no  acci 
dental  honor,  won  by  superior  man 
agement  over  the  real  leaders  of 
the  party.  In  the  great  revolt  of 
1854  against  the  conspiracy  to 
open  up  new  territory  to  slavery, 
though  less  officially  conspicuous 
than  Seward,  Lincoln  soon  proved 
himself  the  most  sagacious  leader 
of  the  new  party.  Lincoln's  action 
in  one  conspicuous  party  crisis  re 
futes,  once  for  all,  the  notion  that 
he  drifted  helplessly  with  the  tide 
and  was  not  a  party  leader. 

When  Senator  Douglas,  at  the 
Winter  session  of  1857-8,  broke 
with  President  Buchanan,  and 
made  his  brilliant  fight  in  the 

[70] 


L       I        N        C        O       L       N 

Senate  against  the  admission  of 
Kansas  as  a  slave  State  under  the 
fraudulent  Lecompton  Constitu 
tion,  many  prominent  anti- slavery 
men  were  dazzled  by  the  political 
pyrotechnics  of  the  " Little  Giant." 
Douglas  actually  hypnotized  some 
of  his  former  antagonists  into  the 
belief  that  he  was  fighting  their 
battles  for  them.  Horace  Greeley 
accepted  him  as  a  new  Moses,  and 
advised  the  Illinois  Republicans  to 
support  him  for  reelection  to  the 
Senate.  Seward  prudently  said 
nothing  publicly,  but  he  was  well 
known  to  be  ready  to  acquiesce  in 
the  leadership  of  Douglas  and  in 
his  reelection.  He,  indeed,  made  a 
speech  in  the  Senate  virtually 
waiving  the  vital  Republican  prin- 

[71] 


LINCOLN 

ciple,  "No  more  slave  territory." 
Politics  never  made  stranger  bed 
fellows  than  when  the  "Free- 
soilers"  of  New  England  were 
found  sympathizing  with  Douglas 
in  his  contest  for  reelection. 

It  was  Lincoln  who  saw  clearly 
that  for  the  Republicans  to  sup 
port  Douglas  for  the  Senate  would 
be  a  practical  surrender  upon  the 
slavery  question.  He  declared  that 
the  issue  was  deeper  than  "the 
mere  question  of  fact"  whether  or 
not  a  particular  Constitution  for 
Kansas  had  been  legally  adopted 
by  the  voters.  He  showed  the  Re 
publicans  that  the  man  who  had 
repeatedly  declared  he  did  not  care 
"whether  slavery  was  voted  down 
or  voted  up"  in  Kansas,  just  so  the 

[72] 


LINCOLN 

vote  was  fair,  could  not  be  safely 
entrusted  with  the  ark  of  the  Ke- 
publican  covenant;  and  when 
Douglas  returned  to  Illinois  in  tri 
umph  to  receive  the  plaudits  of  his 
admirers,  Lincoln  promptly  chal 
lenged  him  to  mortal  political 
combat. 

In  the  great  debate  which  fol 
lowed,  Lincoln  exhumed  from  out 
the  clap-trap  and  rubbish  in  which 
sophistry  sought  to  envelop  it,  the 
essential  moral  question  of  that 
great  controversy.  In  his  speech 
at  Springfield,  June  16, 1858  —  the 
greatest  political  speech  ever  de 
livered  in  this  country  — he  boldly 
proclaimed  the  startling  truth  that 
we  had  come  to  the  crisis  where 
the  country  must  choose,  once  for 

[73] 


LINCOLN 

all,  between  freedom  and  slavery 
as  a  permanent  national  policy,  or 
else  see  the  " divided  house"  topple 
down.  This  was  more  than  four 
months  before  Seward  proclaimed 
the  " irrepressible  conflict"  in  his 
Rochester  speech.  The  master 
feats  by  which  the  "Little  Giant" 
hoped  to  save  his  popularity  in  the 
North,  without  quite  ruining  his 
political  prospects  in  the  South, 
came  to  a  speedy  end  before  the 
keen  and  searching  logic  of  his 
antagonist. 

When  Lincoln  was  defeated  for 
the  Senate,  as  his  friends  warned 
him  would  be  the  case  upon  so  radi 
cal  a  platform  as  he  had  made  for 
himself,  he  accepted  the  result  with 
the  complacency  of  a  true  philoso- 

[74] 


LINCOLN 

pher.  He  knew  that  while  he  had 
lost  his  battle  he  had  not  lost  his 
principles.  Nay,  he  knew  he  had 
laid  the  foundations  of  ultimate 
success  for  the  cause  of  freedom. 
He  had  done  more  than  this;  he 
had  proved  himself  the  most  saga 
cious  and  fearless  leader  of  the  new 
party,  by  true  merit  and  service 
raised  to  that  great  eminence. 

Equally  absurd  is  it,  in  my  judg 
ment,  to  say  that  after  this  great 
debate  with  Douglas,  in  1858,  Lin 
coln  was  an  ' i  unknown  man. ' '  His 
antagonist  was  the  most  noted  man 
in  the  politics  of  that  day.  It  was 
not  without  reason  that  he  was 
called  a  "giant,"  for  a  giant,  in 
deed,  he  was  in  point  of  political 
shrewdness,  force,  and  audacity. 

[75] 


LINCOLN 

The  newspapers  took  note  of  every 
move  of  the  great  Illinois  Senator, 
and  Lincoln's  temerity  in  challeng 
ing  him  excited  wonder.  The  de 
bate  was,  of  course,  followed  in 
tently  by  every  man  who  paid  any 
attention  whatever  to  political  af 
fairs.  However  obscure  Lincoln 
may  previously  have  been,  his  con 
flict  with  Douglas  brought  him  into 
the  very  focus  of  public  attention. 
Lincoln's  great  plainness  and 
simplicity  of  speech  and  argument 
won  upon  all  who  heard  or  read 
what  he  said.  He  never  talked 
4 'over  the  heads"  of  his  hearers. 
His  were  the  arguments  against 
slavery  which  found  lodgment  in 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  com 
mon  people.  His  speech  at  Peoria, 

[70] 


LINCOLN 

October  16,  1854;  his  speech  at 
Springfield,  June  16,  1858;  his  de 
bates  with  Douglas,  and  his  speech 
at  Cooper  Institute,  New  York, 
February  27,  1860,  are  easily  the 
masterpieces  of  all  the  anti-slavery 
literature  preceding  the  War.  In 
them  are  the  body  and  the  blood  of 
the  republicanism  of  that  day.  In 
them  Lincoln  made  the  platform 
whereon  he  won  the  battle  for 
slavery-restriction.* 

Furthermore,  Lincoln  was  not, 
at  any  period  of  his  career,  of  that 
easy-going  temper  which  runs  with 


*  I  do  not  include  the  celebrated  ' '  lost  speech  ' ' 
delivered  by  Lincoln  at  the  Bloomington  Conven 
tion,  May  29,  1856,  because,  while  we  know  that 
speech  greatly  moved  his  auditors,  we  do  not  know 
what  he  said.  I  have  never  believed  Whitney's 
alleged  reproduction  of  that  speech  to  be  genuine. 

[77] 


LINCOLN 

the  tide.  While  he  was  President 
some  thought  he  drifted  aimlessly, 
but  in  fact  he  sailed  the  ship.  His 
strong  hand  was  always  upon  the 
helm,  but  he  had  sense  enough  to 
know  that  the  ship  could  not  be 
sailed  against  wind  and  tide. 
When  he  met  baffling  weather  he 
knew  how  to  tack.  He  could  even 
seek  a  temporary  haven  and  wait 
for  fair  winds,  but  he  never  turned 
back  or  abandoned  the  journey. 
He  knew  there  was  time  for  all 
things,  and  he  never  acted  under 
the  influence  of  panic.  He  bided 
his  time,  and  with  a  patience  as 
deep  as  nature,  as  unfailing  as  des 
tiny,  he  awaited  events. 


[78] 


NCOLN 

most  conspicuous  personal 
quality  of  Lincoln,  as  I  see 
him,  is  manly  strength — a  self- 
confidence,  heroic  but  unexpressed. 
To  me,  Lincoln  seems  on  great  oc 
casions  a  solitary  man,  communing 
with  himself — never,  indeed,  arro 
gant;  not  by  any  means  always  see 
ing  his  way  through  to  the  end,  but 
believing,  with  much  confidence, 
that  he  saw  as  far  as  any,  and  yet 
prudently  concealing,  in  large  de 
gree,  the  confidence  he  felt  in  the 
correctness  of  his  own  views.  I  am 
aware  few  took  this  view  of  Lin 
coln  in  his  lifetime.  The  extreme 
good-fellowship  of  his  lighter  hours 
seems  to  disprove  it;  and  so  many 
incidents  are  current  showing  his 
tenderness  of  heart — such  as  his 

[79] 


LINCOLN 

strangely  intense  and  emotional 
letters  to  Joshua  Speed,  and  the 
alacrity  with  which  he  is  said  to 
have  pardoned  condemned  soldiers 
against  the  protests  of  his  gener 
als — that  the  world  is  in  danger 
of  concluding  that  Lincoln's  chief 
side  was  his  emotional  side  and 
that  there  was  in  him  no  iron. 

That  he  was  gentle,  merciful, 
kind,  and  tolerant,  that  he  was 
above  petty  resentments,  and  al 
ways  ready  to  cover  the  faults  of 
his  fellows  with  the  mantle  of 
charity,  no  one  will  deny.  But 
these  qualities  were  not  incom 
patible  with  strength  of  character. 
To  be  firm  and  enforce  one's  pur 
pose  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  a 
tyrant,  and  what  seemed  weakness 

[80] 


LINCOLN 

in  some  of  Lincoln's  public  acts  was 
often  the  result  of  prudence  and 
sound  judgment.  For  instance,  I 
doubt  whether  Lincoln  ever  set 
aside  a  death  sentence  when  it  was 
not  good  policy  to  do  it.  We  have, 
I  hope,  gotten  far  past  the  barbar 
ism  of  shooting  a  soldier  boy  to 
death  for  sleeping  at  his  post,  and 
Lincoln  had  too  much  sense  to  ap 
prove  such  a  sentence  though  his 
heart  had  been  harder  than  stone. 
Convictions  for  offences  which  in 
volved  a  betrayal  of  the  cause,  or 
those  evincing  great  moral  turpi 
tude,  he  could  approve  without  a 
qualm,  and  he  did  approve  many 
sentences — the  conviction  of  Fitz 
John  Porter  being  the  most  con 
spicuous. 

[81] 


LINCOLN 

T  NOW  go  a  step  further,  and  say 
that  Lincoln  was  a  great  ruler 
of  men;  and  the  man  who  has 
learned  to  rule  others  must  have 
begun  by  learning  to  rule  himself. 
Lincoln,  contrary  to  current  belief, 
was  capable  of  great,  righteous 
wrath,  and  sometimes  of  terrific 
anger,  but  his  wonderful  self-con 
trol  ordinarily  enabled  him  to  con 
ceal  the  storms  of  passion  that 
must  often  have  rent  his  soul 
throughout  the  trying  days  of  the 
War.  He  never  blustered;  his 
method  of  ruling  was  not  so  crude. 
Nor  was  he  one  of  Gratiano's  men, 
whose  visages— 

"Do  cream  and  mantle  like  a  standing  pond, 
And  do  a  willful  stillness  entertain 
With  purpose  to  be  dressed  in  an  opinion 
Of  wisdom,  gravity,  profound  conceit, 
As  who  should  say,  'I  am  Sir  Oracle. ' " 

[82] 


LINCOLN 

On  the  contrary,  Lincoln  was  al 
ways  simple,  natural — almost  boy 
ish.  He  disdained  all  owlish  shows 
of  superior  wisdom.  He  was  per 
fectly  willing  that  the  men  he  ruled 
should  believe  they  were  ruling 
him.  He  did  not  fear  that  some 
upstart  would  cheat  history  and 
wear  his  laurels.  Referring  to  the 
capital  way  in  which  he  got  along 
with  Senator  Sumner,  he  said,  with 
a  sly  twinkle  in  his  eye,  "He  thinks 
he  manages  me."  I  think  Lincoln 
knew  that  he  was  building  for  eter 
nity,  but  with  a  serene  confidence 
he  committed  to  time  the  keeping 
of  his  matchless  fame.  Secretary 
Stanton,  according  to  one  account, 
raised  his  hand  above  the  Presi 
dent's  body  a  moment  after  he  had 

[83] 


LINCOLN 

breathed  his  last,  and  said,  "  There 
lies  the  greatest  ruler  of  men  that 
has  ever  lived."  Great  testimony 
is  this,  coming  from  Stanton. 

A  VERY  great  man  is  elemental. 
He  is,  so  to  speak,  a  grand  di 
vision  of  nature.  We  now  see  that 
Lincoln's  purpose  and  policy 
moved  through  the  War  with  all 
the  steadiness  and  certainty  of  a 
cosmic  force.  His  patience  under 
vast  discouragements  assumes  the 
character  of  the  patience  of  nature 
itself.  His  spirit  was  never  ruffled 
by  enmity  or  elated  by  vanity. 
When  a  little  man  is  permitted  to 
step  suddenly  from  a  puncheon 
floor  to  velvet  he  is  apt  to  become 
giddy.  The  political  "beggar-on- 

[84] 


LINCOLN 

horseback,"  often  met  with  under 
a  popular  government,  generally 
thinks,  with  Jack  Cade,  that  all  the 
sewers  are  going  to  run  red  with 
claret  because  he  is  "king." 
Though  coming  from  a  lowly  es 
tate,  Lincoln  seemed  unconscious 
of  his  position  as  the  first  man  of 
the  nation.  True  to  the  class  which 
produced  him,  he  left  no  degrading 
apology  for  his  breeding  or  the 
meagreness  of  his  early  conditions. 
His  manliness  was  in  his  blood,  and 
we  now  see  that  there  was  never 
taken  to  the  White  House  a  truer 
dignity  of  character,  a  more  firmly- 
poised  intellect,  or  a  more  intelli 
gent  self-reliance,  than  went  there 
from  the  prairies  of  Illinois  with 
Abraham  Lincoln. 

[85] 


NCOLN 

have  seen  that  Lincoln 
stands  in  American  history 
first  for  national  unity.  We  have 
seen  that  he  stands  also  for  liberty 
and  the  rights  of  man  in  subordi 
nation  to  established  law.  We  have 
seen  him,  strong  as  the  "unwedge- 
able  and  knarled  oak,"  bending 
others  to  his  purpose.  We  have 
also  seen  him  exercising  a  wisdom 
and  tact  rarely  found  among  the 
endowments  of  man.  To  all  this  I 
now  add  that  he  was  the  greatest 
popular  leader  that  has  appeared 
in  our  country.  Out  of  the  jungles 
of  practical  politics  have  grown  but 
few  oaks  of  statesmanship,  but 
Lincoln  was  one  of  these  oaks;  and 
it  is  proper,  I  think,  to  call  him  a 
practical  politician  in  the  highest 

[80] 


LINCOLN 

and  best  sense  of  that  term.  In 
this  field,  with  the  sole  exception 
of  Thomas  Jefferson,  he  finds  in 
our  history  no  rival.  He  was  pre 
eminently  the  "man  of  the  people" 
— not  the  demagogue  who  used  the 
people  for  his  purpose,  but  the 
statesman  who  served  them  and 
whom  they  recognized  as  their 
own.  He  led  the  people  for  the 
people's  good,  and  not  for  his 
own  personal  aggrandizement.  In 
Abraham  Lincoln  the  spirit  of  de 
mocracy  was  incarnate.  What  he 
called  "the  plain  people"  loved 
him  in  life  and  have  canonized  him 
in  death,  for  it  is  only  the  common 
people  who  can  confer  enduring 
fame. 

So  complete  was  Lincoln's  belief 

[87] 


LINCOLN 

in  the  intelligence  and  honesty 
of  the  American  people  that  he 
never  found  it  expedient  to  flatter 
them,  but  gave  them  always  his 
honest  thoughts.  He  did  not  reach 
the  people  secondarily,  through  the 
medium  of  local  politicians,  as  is 
now  too  much  the  fashion,  but 
established  his  political  relations 
directly  with  every  citizen  of  the 
Eepublic.  He  had  no  use  for  the 
political  " machine"  of  later  days. 
The  standard  of  Lincoln's  judg 
ment  and  feeling  was  level  with 
every  condition  of  American  life. 
His  communion  with  the  masses 
was  no  condescending  patronage 
but  a  genuine  fellowship.  He  was 
at  home  everywhere;  he  perfectly 
understood  ignorance  and  preju- 

[88] 


LINCOLN 

dice;  he  had  charity  for  them,  but 
he  never  played  the  demagogue  by 
appealing  to  them.  The  coarse 
ness  of  the  vulgar  and  ignorant  did 
not  shock  him  as  it  does  many  good 
men  who  have  not  had  Lincoln's 
experience.  The  truth  is  that  the 
life  of  this  wonderful  man  meas 
ures  the  whole  vast  distance  be 
tween  the  top  and  the  bottom  lay 
ers  of  American  society.  He  grew 
through  all  the  strata,  and  at  last 
flowered  and  bore  fruit  at  the  top. 
It  has  been  well  said  that  he  lived 
all  there  was  of  American  life,  felt 
all  there  was  of  American  experi 
ence,  and  therefore  in  his  character 
and  life  and  work  he  fairly  repre 
sented  and  expressed  the  American 
people. 

[89] 


LINCOLN 

T  INCOLN  was  great  enough  to 
sink  himself  completely  in  his 
cause.  The  fact  that  Stanton  had 
once  treated  him  with  professional 
discourtesy  and  had  then  lately 
criticised  him  in  his  own  bitter 
fashion,  was  to  Lincoln's  mind  no 
reason  why  Stanton  should  not  be 
made  Secretary  of  War,  when  it 
was  deemed  that  his  appointment 
would  most  aid  the  cause.  It  was 
the  country  Lincoln  wanted  served, 
not  himself.  The  friends  of  Chase 
were  surprised  to  learn,  in  that 
eminent  man's  appointment  as 
Chief  Justice,  that  his  resignation 
of  the  Treasury,  though  petulant 
and  ill-judged,  had  left  no  iron  in 
the  soul  of  the  great  President.  It 
is  now  known  that  Lincoln  said, 

[90] 


LINCOLN 

with  the  resignation  of  Chase  still 
in  his  hands  unaccepted,  that  Chase 
should  be  Chief  Justice  if  a  vacan 
cy  arose.* 

A  little  earlier,  when,  through 
the  publication  of  the  "Pomeroy 
Circular,"  the  fact  came  to  light 
that  Chase  was  scheming  against 
his  chief  for  the  presidential  nomi 
nation  in  1864,  and  Chase,  in  some 
confusion  at  the  disclosure,  offered 
his  resignation,  Lincoln  wrote  him 
these  most  wonderful  words, 
"Whether  you  shall  remain  at  the 
head  of  the  Treasury  department 
is  a  question  which  I  will  not  per 
mit  myself  to  consider  from  any 
standpoint  other  than  my  judg- 

*  Chittenden  'a  "  Recollections  of  Lincoln  and 
his  Administration,"  page  380. 

[91] 


LINCOLN 

ment  of  the  public  service,  and  in 
that  view  I  do  not  perceive  occa 
sion  for  a  change."  Certainly  this 
was  not  the  letter  of  a  mere  poli 
tician. 

Only  a  President  of  great 
breadth  could  have  written  to 
Grant  after  the  fall  of  Vicksburg, 
"I  now  wish  to  make  a  personal 
acknowledgment  that  you  were 
right  and  I  was  wrong";  and  it  was 
Lincoln  alone  who,  in  the  face  of 
much  bitter  detraction,  saved  Gen 
eral  Grant  to  the  cause  and  gave 
him  the  opportunity  to  finally 
crush  the  rebellion.  He  expressed 
the  matter  tersely,  "I  can't  spare 
that  man;  he  fights." 

Lincoln's  magnanimous  treat 
ment  of  Seward  after  that  gentle- 

[92] 


LINCOLN 

man  had  suggested  Lincoln's  prac 
tical  abdication  in  his  favor,  is  now 
well  known ;  and  a  still  better  illus 
tration  of  the  same  spirit  has  come 
to  light  since  the  voluminous  bi 
ography  by  Nicolay  and  Hay  was 
published.  Just  after  the  battle 
of  Gettysburg,  Lincoln  thought 
that  prompt  pursuit  and  battle  by 
Meade  would  destroy  Lee's  army 
before  it  could  re-cross  the  swollen 
Potomac.  Meade 's  delay  and  fail 
ure  to  seize  his  great  opportunity 
deeply  grieved  and  annoyed  the 
President,  who  finally  sent  a  per 
emptory  order  to  forthwith  attack 
Lee — which  order  was  accompa 
nied  by  perhaps  the  most  remark 
able  note  ever  sent  by  a  com 
mander  to  his  subordinate.  It  ran 

[93] 


L        I        N        C        0        L        N 

substantially  thus :  ' '  This  order  is 
not  of  record.  If  you  are  success 
ful  you  may  destroy  it,  together 
with  this  note;  if  you  fail,  publish 
the  order,  and  I  will  take  the 
responsibility."* 

But  why  recount  such   minor  in 
cidents  to  prove  Lincoln's  unselfish 


*  An  autograph  letter  of  the  late  James  Har- 
lan,  of  Mt.  Pleasant,  Iowa,  once  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  under  Lincoln,  written  to  the  author,  April 
17,  1897,  ig  conclusive  authority  for  the  statement 
in  the  text.  He  writes:  "  The  President  sent 
an  order,  privately,  directing  Gen.  Meade  to  fol 
low  up  his  victory  by  an  immediate  attack  on 
Lee's  retreating  army,  and  thus,  if  possible,  pre 
vent  the  re-crossing  of  the  Potomac  by  the  Con 
federate  forces,  accompanied  by  a  confidential 
letter  authorizing  him  to  make  the  order  public  in 
case  of  disaster  and  in  case  of  success  to  destroy 
both  the  order  and  confidential  letter.  This  much 
you  may  rely  upon  as  historically  true.  Whether 
or  not  these  papers  ever  reached  Gen.  Meade  I 
am  not  able  to  say.  I  had  supposed,  prior  to  the 
receipt  of  your  letter,  that  this  incident  had  re 
mained  unknown  for  twenty  years  after  the  close 
of  the  War  of  the  Kebellion  to  everybody  except 
Gen.  Meade,  Robert  T.  Lincoln,  and  myself." 

[94] 


LINCOLN 

spirit,  when  it  is  well  known  he 
refused  to  take  to  himself  the  least 
credit  for  the  act  of  emancipation? 
He  knew  that  the  entire  colored 
race,  those  living  and  those  yet  to 
come,  grateful  for  the  boon  of  free 
dom  at  his  hands,  were  ready  to 
place  his  name  among  the  immor 
tals.  He  knew  that  the  civilized 
world  stood  ready  with  a  laurel 
crown  for  the  emancipator  of  a 
race,  and  yet  he  could  put  that 
crown  aside  and  say,  "I  have  not 
controlled  events;  events  have  con 
trolled  me;  God  alone  can  claim  it." 

T    INCOLN  had  read  in  all  chari 
ty  the  secrets  of  the  wonderful 
book  of  human  nature,   and  had 
there  learned  to  allow  for  the  short- 

[95] 


LINCOLN 

comings  of  even  enemies.  He  had 
too  much  breadth  for  bitterness. 
Passion  never  blew  out  the  lamp  of 
his  reason,  and  from  no  lips  ever 
came  more  gracefully  the  soft  an 
swer  which  turneth  away  wrath. 
He  had  the  charity  to  say,  "The 
Southern  people  are  just  what  we 
should  be  in  their  situation." 
Though  this  man  of  mercy  and 
gentleness  was  called  by  destiny 
to  conduct  a  gigantic  and  cruel 
civil  war;  though  he  stood  for  years 
at  the  very  storm-centre  of  an  era 
of  passion  and  hate;  though  all  the 
pent-up  fury  and  rage  of  fifty  years 
of  bitter  contention  beat  upon  him, 
he  left  behind  not  a  single  bitter 
memory,  and  malice  itself  was 
disarmed  before  his  great  heart 

[96] 


LINCOLN 

was  cold.  His  utterances  will  be 
searched  in  vain  for  one  harsh 
word  against  any  of  the  Southern 
people,  and  it  is  as  appropriate  as 
it  is  touching  that  Confederate 
soldiers  now  come  forward  as  his 
most  eloquent  and  appreciative 
eulogists. 

T  INCOLN  was  not  schooled  or 
learned,  but  he  was  educated. 
He  had  endured  all  the  agonies  of 
complete  mental  discipline.  The 
process  of  his  education  never 
ceased,  but  he  spent  no  time  learn 
ing  the  wrong  things.  His  mind 
was  not  clogged  with  useless  lum 
ber.  His  knowledge  was  all  corre 
lated,  and  his  intellectual  weapons 
were  as  keen  as  blades  of  Damas- 

[97] 


LINCOLN 

cus.  His  facts  were  not  numerous, 
but  they  were  always  ready  for  use. 
He  had  read  men  more  than  books, 
and  it  was  with  men — not  books — 
he  had  to  deal.  He  studied  other 
men  and  he  also  studied  himself. 
He  cross-examined  his  own  soul. 
His  growth  was  evolution  rather 
than  acquisition.  Botanists  tell  of 
a  class  of  plants  called  the  "  exoge 
nous,"  which  grow  by  taking  on 
layers  from  the  outside,  and  of 
another  class  called  the  "  endoge 
nous,"  which  grow  from  within— 
from  the  heart.  Lincoln,  like  the 
endogenous  plant,  grew  from  with 
in.  He  expanded  by  the  action  of 
subjective  moral  and  intellectual 
forces.  His  mind  literally ' i  worked 
itself  clear."  In  all  classifications 

[98] 


LINCOLN 

of  humankind  Lincoln  will  stand 
as  an  individual,  akin  to  all  classes 
but  belonging  exclusively  to  none. 

Lincoln  had  the  best  of  legal 
minds,  but  fortunately  he  never  de 
generated  into  what  Seward  called 
a  ' '  mere  lawyer. ' '  He  took  the  ker 
nel  and  rejected  the  husk.  Those 
who  would  appreciate  his  great 
grasp  of  constitutional  questions 
must  read  his  State  papers  and  his 
letters  wherein  he  discusses  the 
war-power  of  the  Executive  over 
slavery  and  over  the  right  of  habeas 
corpus.* 

This  man  had  no  extensive  ac 
quaintance  with  general  literature. 
He  told  the  artist  Carpenter,  who 

*  It  will  pay  well  also  to  read  Frederick  Tre 
vor  Hill's  book,  "  Lincoln  the  Lawyer,"  which 
was  published  since  this  paper  was  written. 

[99] 


LINCOLN 

spent  six  months  at  the  White 
House  painting  the  Emancipation 
Group,  that  he  never  read  a  novel 
clear  through.  Scott,  Thackeray, 
and  Hawthorne  wrote  all  their  nov 
els  within  the  limits  of  Lincoln's 
lifetime,  and  in  the  same  period 
Dickens  wrote  all  but  two  of  his; 
yet  Lincoln  appears  to  have  known 
no  more  of  these  authors  than  he 
did  of  ^Eschylus  or  Homer. 

To  a  mind  like  Lincoln's,  that 
which  has  actually  happened  in 
this  world  is  far  more  interesting 
and  far  more  dramatic  than  the 
mere  dreams  of  fiction.  In  poetry 
he  is  known  to  have  read  Burns 
and  Byron,  and  Shakespeare  in 
part,  and  of  the  plays  that  he  read 
he  judged  that  " Macbeth"  was 

[100] 


LINCOLN 

greatest.  Mournful  verses  seemed 
to  strike  a  chord  in  his  heart,  and 
he  was  not  over -critical  as  to  liter 
ary  quality.  He  had  read  and 
studied  the  Bible  in  the  translation 
of  King  James,  and  the  influence 
of  its  pure  and  simple  style  is 
everywhere  apparent  in  what  he 
wrote.  Doubtless  Lincoln  knew, 
in  outline  at  least,  the  history  of 
other  countries  besides  his  own, 
but  evidence  of  the  fact  is  not  pre 
served  in  his  writings. 

T  N  all  the  writings  of  Lincoln 
there  are  not  to  be  found  more 
than  two  or  three  allusions  to  the 
classic  myths,  nor  did  he  often, 
if  at  all,  point  a  moral  by  refer 
ence  to  the  history  of  Greece  or 

[101] 


LINCOLN 

Rome.  In  an  early  sophomoric 
production  he  barely  mentioned 
the  names  of  Caesar  and  Alexan 
der.  Once  in  a  letter  he  referred 
to  Procrustes  and  his  fabled  bed 
stead,  and  sometimes  he  jocu 
larly  spoke  of  Stanton,  his  Sec 
retary  of  War,  as  "Mars."  Be 
tween  his  nomination  and  election 
he  read  Plutarch's  "Lives,"  in  or 
der  to  justify  a  statement  made  by 
Scripps  in  a  campaign  biography. 
If  he  ever  read  the  rich  mythology 
of  Greece  and  Eome  it  made  little 
impression  upon  him.  Mercury, 
with  winged  feet,  seems  to  have 
brought  him  no  message  from  the 
gods  of  old.  He  heard  not  the 
thunders  of  Jove,  the  sobs  of  Mobe, 
nor  the  entrancing  strains  of  Or- 

[102] 


LINCOLN 

pheus'  harp;  and  yet  this  man, 
unschooled  and  unlearned,  grasped 
and  solved  the  political  problem  of 
his  country  and  his  time.  Joseph 
Jefferson,  the  actor,  in  his  "Auto 
biography"  (page  30)  makes  Lin 
coln,  in  what  he  terms  a  "  har 
angue"  to  the  City  Council  of 
Springfield,  Illinois,  made  in  1839, 
"  trace  the  history  of  the  drama 
from  the  time  when  Thespis  acted 
in  a  cart,  to  the  stage  of  to-day." 
Those  who  have  studied  the  style 
of  Lincoln  and  know  the  range  of 
his  illustrations  will  be  somewhat 
surprised  to  know  that,  in  1839,  he 
took  Athens,  B.  C.  600,  as  his  start 
ing  point  in  persuading  the  city 
fathers  of  an  obscure  western  town 
to  repeal  an  unjust  tax  against 

[103] 


LINCOLN 

players !  Mr.  Jefferson  probably  in 
troduced  Thespis  into  this  account 
through  some  substitution  of  the 
memory.  Jefferson  seems  not  to 
have  known  that  Lincoln  was  him 
self  at  the  time  in  question  (1839) 
a  member  of  the  Board  of  Trustees 
of  the  old  town  of  Springfield. 
Whatever  he  did,  therefore,  must 
have  been  done  in  pursuance  of  his 
duties  as  such  member  and  not  as 
the  attorney  of  Jefferson's  father. 
But  if  Lincoln  did  not  read  wide 
ly,  neither  did  he  read  anything 
lightly.  He  never  contracted  men 
tal  indigestion  by  gorging  his  mind 
with  literary  sweetmeats.  He  read 
sound,  strong  things,  and  his  men 
tal  grasp  was  wonderful.  He  never 
stopped  until  he  had  bounded  a 

[104] 


L       I        N        C        Q       L       N 

subject  on  all  sides.  He  took  noth 
ing  upon  faith  but  would  know  the 
real  truth,  though  he  must,  like 
doubting  Thomas,  thrust  his  own 
hand  into  the  wound.  The  political 
history  of  the  United  States  he 
knew  in  its  minutest  details,  par 
ticularly  those  portions  relating  to 
slavery,  and  his  ability  to  interpret 
historic  facts  and  events  in  a  philo 
sophic  way  has  never  been  sur 
passed. 

Lincoln's  logic  was  the  joint 
product  of  honesty  and  common 
sense.  He  had  the  courage  to  know 
and  to  face  the  truth.  He  was  will 
ing  to  go  whithersoever  his  best 
thought  led  him.  He  shared  with 
all  great  and  noble  minds  that  high, 
unfaltering  faith  that  the  right 
[105] 


LINCOLN 

must,  in  the  end,  triumph.  The 
closing  sentence  of  his  speech  at 
Cooper  Institute  is  the  key  to  his 
whole  life  —  "Let  us  have  faith 
that  right  makes  might,  and  in  that 
faith  let  us,  to  the  end,  dare  to  do 
our  duty  as  we  understand  it." 

TN  point  of  literary  merit  Lin 
coln's  writings  will  bear  com 
parison  with  the  best  in  the  Eng 
lish  language.  His  literary  style 
was  as  unique  as  his  personality  - 
as  characteristic  of  him  as  the  great 
nose  on  his  face.  He  wrote  Saxon, 
and  demonstrated  that  a  large  vo 
cabulary  and  an  ornate  style  are 
not  necessary  to  the  forceful  ex 
pression  of  thought.  He  addressed 
himself  first  to  the  understanding 

[106] 


LINCOLN 

and  next  to  the  heart.  He  was  one 
of  the  greatest  masters  of  the  art 
of  statement  that  has  ever  writ 
ten  the  English  tongue.  He  knew 
the  sources  of  prejudice  and  the 
springs  of  action.  Pathos  and  hu 
mor  are  judiciously  mingled  in 
whatever  he  said  and  wrote.  He 
it  was  who,  with  the  hand  of  a  mas 
ter,  at  last  lovingly  touched  the 
chords  which  again  swelled  "the 
chorus  of  the  Union."  He  could 
put  a  chapter  of  argument  into  ten 
words  of  speech. 

A  respectable  volume  could  be 
filled  with  passages  illustrating  the 
strong,  quaint  style,  apt  illustra 
tions,  rare  ^Esopian  wisdom,  and 
-upon  proper  occasion — the  pa 
thos  and  eloquence,  which  abound 

[107] 


LINCOLN 

throughout  the  sayings  and  writ 
ings  of  Lincoln. 

No  illustration  was  too  homely 
to  be  used  if  it  fitted  the  case.  To 
Hooker,  who  had  proposed  to  cross 
the  Rappahannock  at  an  inoppor 
tune  time,  Lincoln  wrote,  "I  would 
not  take  any  risk  of  being  entan 
gled  upon  the  river  like  an  ox 
jumped  half  over  a  fence,  and  li 
able  to  be  torn  by  dogs  front  and 
rear,  without  a  fair  chance  to  gore 
one  way  or  kick  the  other." 

Again,  discussing  a  plan  of  cam 
paign — with  an  apt  but  inimitable 
homeliness  —  he  said,  that  if  a  cer 
tain  general  could  not  "skin"  he 
could  "hold  a  leg"  for  somebody 
else;  and  his  pithy  saying  that 
"You  can  fool  all  of  the  people 

[108] 


LINCOLN 

some  of  the  time,  and  some  of  the 
people  all  the  time,  but  you  can't 
fool  all  the  people  all  the  time," 
has  become  an  aphorism  of  Ameri 
can  politics.* 

In  denying  the  broad  charge 
made  by  Douglas  that  he  was  in 
favor  of  negro  equality,  Lincoln 
pronounced,  and  on  several  occa 
sions  repeated,  his  great  definition 
of  the  negro's  rights.  "In  the 
right,"  said  he,  "to  eat  the  bread, 
without  leave  of  anybody,  which 
his  own  hand  earns,  the  negro  is 
the  equal  of  myself,  of  Judge  Doug- 


*  An  effort  has  been  made  to  claim  this  saying 
for  P.  T.  Barnum.  Air.  Barnum  's  authorship  has 
not  been  proved,  and  there  is  at  least  one  man  of 
my  acquaintance  living,  "of  sound  mind  and 
memory,"  who  heard  Lincoln  use  that  language 
in  a  speech  at  Bloomington,  111.,  as  early  as  1856. 

[109] 


LINCOLN 

las,  or  of  any  other  man."  Again, 
speaking  upon  the  same  subject, 
he  said,  "I  protest  against  the 
counterfeit  logic  which  concludes, 
because  I  do  not  want  a  black 
woman  for  a  slave  I  must  neces 
sarily  want  her  for  a  wife." 

When  Douglas  proposed  to  set 
tle  the  vexed  question  of  slavery 
extension  by  "  popular  sovereign 
ty,"  Lincoln  quaintly  said  this 
meant,  that  "if  any  man  chooses  to 
enslave  another  no  third  man  shall 
be  allowed  to  object";  and  the  ef 
fort  to  maintain  both  the  Dred 
Scott  decision  and  "popular  sov 
ereignty"  at  the  same  time  he  said 
meant,  "that  a  thing  may  be  law 
fully  driven  away  from  a  place 
where  it  has  a  lawful  right  to  go." 

[110] 


LINCOLN 

To  a  number  of  persons  who 
called  to  remonstrate  against  his 
method  of  conducting  the  War,  he, 
with  some  impatience,  said :  i  i  Sup 
pose  all  you  are  worth  was  in  gold 
and  you  had  put  it  into  the  hands  of 
Blondin  to  carry  across  Niagara  - 
would  you  shake  the  cable,  or  keep 
shouting  to  him,  *  Blondin,  stand 
up  a  little  straight er!  Blondin, 
stoop  a  little  more!  Go  a  little 
faster!  Lean  a  little  more  to  the 
north!  Lean  a  little  more  to  the 
south!'  No  --  you  would  hold  your 
breath  as  well  as  your  tongue,  and 
keep  your  hands  off  until  he  was 
safe  over. ' '  To  another  faultfinder, 
who  thought  Lincoln's  measures 
too  severe,  he  wrote,  "  Would  you 
drop  the  War  where  it  is,  or  would 

[111] 


LINCOLN 

you  prosecute  it  with  elder-stock 
squirts  charged  with  rose  water  I" 

In  reprimanding  a  young  officer 
for  quarrelling,  he  said,  "  Quarrel 
not  at  all.  .  .  .  Yield  larger 
things  to  which  you  can  show  no 
more  than  equal  right,  and  yield 
lesser  ones  though  clearly  your 
own.  Better  give  your  path  to  a 
dog  than  be  bitten  by  him  in  con 
testing  for  the  right.  Even  killing 
the  dog  would  not  cure  the  bite." 

To  his  friend,  Joshua  Speed,  he 
once  said,  "  Speed,  die  when  I  may, 
I  want  it  said  of  me  by  those 
who  knew  me  best,  that  I  always 
plucked  a  thistle  and  planted  a 
flower  when  I  thought  a  flower 
would  grow." 

He  could  be  terribly  severe  with- 

[112] 


LINCOLN 

out  descending  to  scurrility.  Al 
luding  to  Douglas'  "don't  care" 
policy  on  slavery  he  said,  "I  sup 
pose  the  institution  of  slavery 
really  looks  small  to  him.  He  is  so 
put  up  by  nature  that  a  lash  upon 
his  back  would  hurt  him,  but  a  lash 
on  anybody  else's  back  does  not 
hurt  him." 

Replying  to  a  committee  of  la 
boring  men  who  waited  upon  him 
with  an  address  in  1864,  he  closed 
with  these  words,  than  which  I 
know  of  nothing  wiser  or  better  in 
the  English  language : 

"  That  some  should  be  rich  shows  that 
others  may  become  rich,  and  hence  is  just 
encouragement  to  industry  and  enterprise. 
Let  not  him  who  is  houseless  pull  down  the 
house  of  another,  but  let  him  labor  diligently 
and  build  one  for  himself,  thus  by  example 

[113] 


LINCOLN 

assuring  that  his   own   shall   be   safe   from 
violence  when  built." 

T  INCOLN  was  certainly  not 
without  personal  ambition, 
and  yet  with  only  his  own  advance 
ment  as  an  object  he  would  have 
lived  and  died  in  comparative  ob 
scurity.  Had  he  been  called  to  the 
bench  he  would  have  made  a  great 
and  just  judge,  like  John  Marshall. 
It  praises  him  to  say  that  he  could 
never  have  made  himself  famous 
except  in  a  noble  cause.  Some  have 
indulged  in  fruitless  speculations 
as  to  what  Lincoln  would  have  been 
had  he  been  differently  educated, 
and  as  to  whether  or  not,  in  later 
years,  he  would  have  added  to  or 
taken  from  his  fame  had  not  the 

[114] 


LINCOLN 

cruel  assassin  struck  him  down. 
Putting  aside  such  idle  thoughts, 
we  may  well  bow  in  devout  thank 
fulness  that  in  the  tide  of  time 
Lincoln  carne  as  a  boon  to  our 
country;  and  our  hearts  may  swell 
with  a  just  pride  that  his  career, 
from  birth  to  final  martyrdom,  fur 
nishes  a  most  conclusive  testimony 
to  the  value  of  our  free  institutions. 
What  Washington  had  once  been 
to  the  American  Colonies,  Lincoln 
proved  himself  to  the  American 
Nation.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
tears  a  good  man  staunches  are 
shed  upon  his  grave,  and  on  Lin 
coln's  was  certainly  poured  out  a 
flood  of  the  keenest  popular  grief 
which  political  history  has  known. 
Even  as  one  revered  as  the  Saviour 

[115] 


LINCOLN 

of  a  lost  world  was  born  in  a  stable 
and  cradled  in  a  manger,  so  this 
Liberator  of  a  race — this  saviour 
of  organized  democracy  in  the 
Western  world — first  heard  the 
lullaby  of  love  in  a  rude  frontier 
cabin,  and,  with  the  earth  of  a 
common  humanity  still  clinging 
upon  him,  went  forth  to  the  agonies 
of  martyrdom  and  fame.  And  there 
upon  the  sacred  mount  of  service 
and  suffering — behold,  he,  too,  was 
transfigured  before  the  nations! 
All  the  dross  and  contaminations  of 
early  environment  at  length  fell 
away  and  left  this  lowly  man  of  the 
people  standing  lofty,  and  serene, 
and  spotless  in  the  white  light  of 
history;  and  when  that  murderous 
pistol-shot  at  last  stilled  his  tired 

[116] 


LINCOLN 

heart  and  sped  his  weary  soul  to 
its  reward,  the  sounds  of  bitter 
lamentation,  coming  in  commingled 
strains  alike  from  the  palace  and 
from  the  hovel,  proclaimed  but  too 
truly  that  "our  common  manhood 
had  lost  a  kinsman." 


[117] 


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